It Never Goes Out
by belladonnacullen
Summary: Seven years after Bella and Edward's long-awaited happily ever after the world has other ideas. Bella and Edward face their worst fears, but will they be able to face one another? A companion to There is a Light. B x E, AH, canon pairings
1. The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust

**Twilight isn't by me, haha. Credit for** ** _Changes_** **goes to Bowie. When I heard he'd passed I almost immediately worried about TiaL Edward and how he'd handle it. Looking back I guess that was the tiny little seed that I tucked away in the soil of my subconscious that eventually gave way to this.**

 **SereneInNC is back as my beta. She's been with me from the beginning with these characters & I'm so glad she left beta retirement to work with me on this.**

 **Without further ado, There is a Light... and It Never Goes Out.**

xXxXx

 **Present Day - June 7, 2018**

A door clicks open and for the briefest moment I hear the din outside my dressing room. It's the kind of dull roar the voices of a few thousand people make when they've come together for an event. Tonight is an event. Tonight I am the fucking event.

"Here you go, buddy," I hear Emmett say. "This has gotta be quick."

"Of course. Whatever times he gives me is golden."

A chair scrapes along the floor.

"Edward?" Emmett calls.

I look at myself in the mirror. I'm much older than the last time I did this shit. I've gone gray at the temples, and crows feet are etched at the corners of my eyes. Laugh lines are permanent these days, despite the fact I haven't been laughing much as of late. Nevertheless, I'm so much happier than the last time I did anything like this. And I'm scared shitless.

Heavy boots echo as they cross the dressing room, heading for the bathroom. "Ed?"

I splash water on my face and grab a towel to wipe away the wetness, then go for the doorknob. I eye pill bottles on the shelf on the way out of the bathroom, then pull the door firmly closed behind me. A kid no more than twenty-three nearly knocks over his chair as I walk into the room.

"You okay, Ed?" Emmett asks, clapping me on the back. He's fallen back into his role as security with seamless ease. Meanwhile, this old persona fits me about as well as one of Alice's leather jackets.

"Mr. Cullen." The kid rushes to greet me, stumbling forward with his hand outstretched. "It's an honor, sir."

"Ed?" Emmett asks again.

"I've got this," I assure him. His eyes meet mine and I nod. His smile lets me know we're not just talking about the skinny twirp with the writing pad and the iPhone in his hand. "Give us five?" I ask.

"No problem, buddy. Five minutes, kid," Emmett says to the reporter on his way out the door. Once again it opens and there's a swell of voices and music. It clicks shut and we're left in silence; just me and an adolescent reporter, hand outstretched.

I take a seat on the couch and lean back, trying to get comfortable. The boy makes haste to find his own discarded chair. His forehead glistens and he wipes a hand on the leg of his jeans. I watch as he tries to make up his mind about how close he should position himself. I remind myself I shouldn't pass off my insecurity to the kid in front of me. Making him sweat will do me no good.

I lean forward, elbows on my knees. "Deep breath, son. Take a seat wherever you want. Let's make the most of this for you."

The boy's chest rises and falls, then his shoulders sink just a little. He manages to sit. His fingers quit fiddling.

"What's your name?" I ask.

"Jim Dalton, Mr. Cullen."

"Call me Edward. I'm not your high school math teacher."

"No, sir. I mean, no, Edward. I should think not."

"Not like I don't know my way around a trigonometry problem." Thea's homework is challenging. We all help out from time to time.

The boy in front of me smiles tentatively.

"Where would you like to begin?" I ask. We have five minutes, and at this rate this kid is certain to leave empty handed.

Jim smiles. "Well, the beginning, I guess. How did this all start?"

I chuckle despite myself. "Do you know the Masens, Jim?" I ask.

"Are you kidding? The Masens were one of the seminal punk rock bands of the twentieth century. From your first show in '81 you set the -"

"I was joking. That's the long version of this story, and you don't have the time for it. If you want the long version, you should read -"

"Isabella Swan?" the boy asks. Hearing her name on the boy's lips makes my chest ache and I find myself catching my breath. "I have, Edward. We all have."

Fear returns, redoubled. I think about the pills. I think about Emmett's eyes. Where are Jasper and Alice? I remember Seth's words from earlier in the evening.

"Tonight's story isn't in that book, Jim. Tonight's story began in January 2016."

xXxXx

 **January 10th, 2016**

I read the headline on my phone on a Sunday morning as I sat down for coffee. My hand began to shake and my phone slipped, clattering as it hit the tabletop. Moments passed, my vision blurred with unshed tears. At some point I realized I was rocking, my breath coming hard and uneven.

We hadn't spoken in over a year, but we'd been in touch. I'd received a text from David just weeks ago. I retrieved my phone from where it fell and negotiated the touchscreen with difficulty, now flowing tears making fingertip navigation difficult. Texts finally accessed, I scrolled.

 **Our good times will never rot.**

 **Xoxo**

He'd been saying goodbye.

I didn't know how ill he was, or I'd chosen not to ask. I'd ignored the signs. He was older, working himself to death on a Broadway production. I was jealous of his work, his music. I was always jealous. I was always so small in comparison to him.

After minutes spent contemplating his last words to me, I stood, but there was nowhere to walk. Bella was out with Rosalie at a spa by the Presidio. I couldn't imagine calling her and speaking the words out loud. David was dead. I never imagined the world without him in it, and since he was neither a dear friend or a lover, this knowledge was strange and unexpected.

My phone buzzed to life in my hands, startling me. I nearly dropped it again, but managed to hold on this time around. It was Alice. I held the phone to my ear, but couldn't force words out of my mouth.

"Edward?"

She'd been crying.

"Edward?"

"I didn't know." I heard my voice crack. I wiped at my eyes.

"No one did." She sniffled.

"How's Jasper?"

"How are you?" she asked, her reply a well-practiced deflection.

"I'm shit."

Perhaps our good times would never rot, but the world around me suddenly seemed putrid. I sat back down, then stood again. The day stretched gray and meaningless.

"Are you okay, Edward?"

"Ha." I rooted through cabinets, coming up with Scotch, glittering like gold. The aftertaste of morning coffee was bitter on my tongue.

"Where's Bella?"

"With Rosalie."

"Thea?"

"With Seth."

"Edward?" Alice was sobbing. Tears wet my cheeks as I poured a finger.

xXxXx

 **September 28th, 1972**

"Edward!" Alice's voice echoed through the 59th Street Station. "Hey, Edward!" she called as she dashed down the steps and across the platform. I edged some of my classmates out of the way so I could hold the closing doors and Alice slipped onto the uptown bound A train, a little out of breath from her run. Her cheeks were pink and her dark eyes sparkled, a sign she had something on her mind.

"Thanks," she huffed.

"Yup."

I shifted from foot to foot, uncertain if I should try to find a seat or try to find something interesting to say to Alice. Alice Brandon was two years older than me. She'd lived in my apartment complex for as long as I could remember. She was always short for her age and I was tall like my dad, so as younger kids we'd often get thrown together, adults assuming similar stature equaled intellectual ability. Alice was kind enough about it and she put up with me over the years. She'd roll her eyes when my naivete showed at the edges: when at ten I'd wondered out loud how unwed mothers existed because you needed to be married to have a baby, or when at twelve I'd assumed someone smoking weed was smoking a cigarette. She'd be kind in the future too - like when I'd tell her I was in love with her. She always knew better, though.

It's because Alice didn't judge, and even better, she was the possessor of all this inscrutable information, that I worshipped her. As a little kid I'd wander around after her in the playground. While her friends might smirk and snicker, Alice would tell them to get over themselves and I'd be almost welcomed at the periphery of their existence.

My infatuation extended to Alice's mother who was as unlike my own mother as any two white women living in New York City in the 1970's could be. As far as I could tell, my mother woke wearing blue eyeshadow, with every permed hair in place, and a crease down the center of each leg of her polyester slacks. Meanwhile, Alice's mom left the house in torn T-shirts and dirty jeans with wild black hair tumbling down her back in unruly waves.

The one thing Alice and I had in common was our fathers, or our lack of fathers to be more specific. Alice didn't have a dad, at least not one I'd ever seen. Alice's mom had boyfriends, and sometimes they would move in with the two of them. Eventually they always moved out. My own dad was around sometimes. He'd 'swoop in' as mom said, and he'd treat us to new clothes and trips to the theater, and sometimes vacations to deserted beaches on the east end of Long Island or even farther. Once we all flew to Paris, and another time he took us to Berlin. Mom didn't speak about the times I found her crying and alone, though. She forbade me to talk about the time I couldn't wake dad up in the bathroom, or all the times we had to go get him at the hospital.

I know other kids whispered about my dad. They talked about him when he showed up at weird hours, unshaven and dirty with five cases of melting ice pops. They wondered about him when he'd been gone for a few months. Alice never whispered. She never said a thing.

"So, my mom went to Woodstock with Gary. They'll be home Sunday," Alice informed me on the train that Thursday afternoon.

"Really? Wow." I couldn't fathom being left by myself for days.

"She left me her ticket to Ziggy Stardust."

"Ziggy? Like in the comics?"

Alice rolled her eyes. "Really?"

The train came to a sudden stop and a large guy behind Alice stumbled into her, pushing her up against my chest. I held my breath as I held her upright. I could feel her ribs through her denim jacket. She was close enough for me to see little silver speckles in her eyes and smell the peppermint gum she was chewing .

"Um."

"Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars?" she asked as she stood back up, righted her clothing, and tucked her hair back behind her ears.

"Mars?"

"They're not really from Mars. Obviously."

"Obviously," I mumbled, eying my black dress shoes, then Alice's platform wedges.

"Come with me?"

"What?" I asked a little too loud. People next to me turned to look.

"Come with me to the show. It'll blow your mind."

"When?" I asked. I didn't know a thing about this band from Mars, but I'd go to Pluto with Alice if she asked me to.

"Tonight."

My heart plummeted. Despite both having absentee fathers, Alice and I had a vastly different homelife. Mom kept a close eye on me, especially since I got back from the hospital the last time. She seemed to think she could regiment my dad right out of me, which wasn't fair. I wasn't like my dad. Sometimes I couldn't get myself out of the bed, but I wasn't the most magnetic person in the room like he could be. I didn't draw people to me like bees to honey. I didn't make scenes. Anyway, mom had me up at dawn, then off to school in time to arrive ten minutes early. When I get home I had piano lessons, or fencing, or pottery class, or creative writing. She carefully planned so I'd never get stuck in my bed in the daytime again. Then at night mom imposed a strict lights out by 9:00.

Of course, by 9:30 I would be hiding under my covers with a flashlight. My only escape from all the monotony was in the form of the printed word. I'd read anything I could get my hands on, whatever book came my way. I devoured the classics, poured over existentialist poets, picked through early twentieth century playwrights, and even read contemporary romance novels - some portions many times over. The novels I loved the most were the ones that took me farthest from home. Science fiction managed to launch me completely out of the solar system.

Sometimes at night when I was reading in bed I'd hear Alice laughing from the open window. I'd look down onto the little playground and spot her and her mom. Her mom would be swinging on the swingset or climbing the jungle gym, often with a cigarette between her lips. Sometimes there would be a man there - almost always unshaven with shaggy hair. It reminded me of my dad when he was in a bad way. The thing is, my mom would never be seen in public with him when he looked like that, let alone climbing a jungle gym with him and her son in the middle of the night.

"There's no way." I sighed.

"There's always a way. An obvious way. There's a fire escape outside your window."

"Why me?" I asked.

"Who else am I gonna get to go?"

I could think bunches of people off the top of my head. With her big black eyes and pretty pink lips, Alice was adorable. She could ask fifty people on this train car alone. "What do you mean?"

"Have you ever done anything like this before?" Alice asked.

I shook my head.

"Exactly. Your mom'll never suspect it, and, well, it's _just_ your mom. Sandra and Janelle's parents grounded them after last time. Your mom will never know."

xXxXx

Alice met me on the ground outside my window. She'd already pulled the ladder down, so I had an easy jump from the last step. "All cool?" she asked.

I was anything but. I'd bunched pillows and dirty clothing underneath my blanket in case my mom tried to check on me. I practically held my breath after lights out and jumped every time my mom walked by my bedroom door. I couldn't come up with anything to wear and settled on a plain white t-shirt and a pair of well-worn jeans that were quickly becoming too small. Alice looked me over and I prayed I'd somehow come up with 'all cool'. Meanwhile she was wearing a leather jacket over a multicolored and sequined jumpsuit that tied around the neck. No, I was not cool.

As always, though, Alice didn't seem to judge. Instead, she held up a thin, white cigarette. "You want some?"

I shook my head.

"Edward, you're about to vibrate out of your shoes. You _need_ this. Like for years now you've needed this. Trust me."

I didn't exactly trust Alice, but I always did what she said. Fifteen minutes later we emerged from the subway like we'd emerged into another world, Bright white spotlights swept through the night sky, while crowds of people with dyed hair and sparkling makeup, wearing leather and feathers milled around in a cloud of weed and cigarettes. The air was electric and I was sure I could feel it shaking around me. Or I shook. It was impossible to tell where I ended and the air began.

Alice grabbed my arm and nodded at someone ahead of us in the swirling crowd. "Was that Warhol?"

"War-who?"

Alice laughed. I laughed. This was funny. I couldn't catch my breath. I couldn't have removed the smile from my face if I wanted to. I clung to Alice for support even though I was a head taller.

Alice shrugged off her jacket and her jumpsuit sparkled around her like she was wearing a star. She shook out her hair, grabbed my hand, and sashayed into the crowd. "We've got to run since we had to wait for your bedtime." Alice glanced over her shoulder at me and arched an eyebrow and I laughed again, choking on smoke.

 _A Clockwork Orange_ was playing in the theater as we entered, but I didn't know that then. I only knew Alice Brandon was holding my hand, the sequins on her top made my whole body tingle, and I couldn't stop smiling. Looking around, Carnegie Hall was revealed to me like I was seeing it for the first time. I'd been to countless piano concerts and orchestra performances there over the years, but I'd never noticed how the theater arched and swung outward, studded with dim lights like an extraterrestrial hydra, like a unidentified flying object about to quiver to life and take flight.

Suddenly everyone around us screamed. Alice squealed and pointed toward the stage where a thin man in a sequined jumpsuit (quite a bit like the one Alice was wearing) simply said, "Hello."

xXxXx

Ninety minutes later I was gasping for air, almost like I'd been punched in the gut. "What _was_ that?" I asked as the audience hooted and hollered around me, clapping, stomping, singing.

Alice beamed. She threw her arms around my neck. "History. That, Edward Cullen, was history."

The two of us were swept up in the crowd and carried out of the theater and New York hit me like I was seeing it for the first time: the glowing billboards, impossibly tall buildings, and bright yellow taxicabs weaving between horse and carriages.

"Let's walk," Alice suggested, eying the hordes clogging the subway entrance, and it was the best suggestion ever. The city felt bigger, its colors more vivid, and my body burned from head to toe - the first time I felt like I was a part of it all.

"Why me?" I asked, stealing a glance at Alice as we waited at a light. "Those were excuses on the train."

Alice shrugged. "I thought you would like him. Since you've been back, I don't know, I just thought…" Alice glanced shyly in my direction. "What _did_ you think?"

"I don't know." I honestly didn't know. I'd never seen anything like Bowie before. I'd never heard anything like Bowie before. I didn't know anything like him existed in the world. I knew there was a drug scene downtown somewhere, and I had a vague sense what I just saw might have involved more than the weed I'd smoked before the show. Sometimes people said stuff about dad and drugs, but I knew better. What was going on with my dad came from deep inside him, not in an alley or something. Anyway, drug use wasn't anything I'd ever have associated with the androgynous beauty of the music I'd just heard in Carnegie Hall. That performance stood apart from everything I'd ever been exposed to before that night.

I stopped as we were poised to enter the South side of the park and took a deep breath. "Is it because you think I'm…"

"What?" Alice asked, wide-eyed.

I shrugged, unwilling to look Alice in the eye.

"It's because I like you. Because you keep to yourself too much. Because you're a weirdo, I guess. But in a good way, and everyone back there was a weirdo too. You weren't there to be seen. You were there because -"

"Because you asked," I finished for her, the most earnest I'd ever been in my life up until that point.

Alice shook her head and her shaggy hair bounced around her face, reflecting silver and blue in the city lights. " _So_?"

I felt my face going red and looked quickly away. "Do you have another, um, like before?"

Alice did have another, and after a few puffs I felt the top of my skull lift off my head. Another couple puffs and my insecurity flew away to wherever the rest of my skull had gone. I smiled again and Alice and I laughed as we sang Suffragette City and Changes, dancing and twirling through the park on our way home.

Five nights later Alice took me to the Oscar Wilde Room at the Broadway Central. Five nights later she helped change my life forever.

xXxXx

 **January 10th, 2016**

 _Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!_

 _Turn and face the strange_

 _Ch-ch-changes!_

 _Don't want to be a richer man_

I spun as I sang while using my glass of Scotch as a mic. Alice bobbed her head from the couch where she'd become one with the pillows.

 _Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!_

 _Turn and face the strange_

 _Ch-ch-changes!_

 _There's gonna have to be a different man_

Another spin and the liquid sploshed in my glass, splattering onto my hand. I opened my eyes only to find Bella standing in the doorway radiating equal parts amusement and concern as I stood before her a sticky drunk.

"Shit," I mumbled, searching for a napkin. Coming up empty-handed I wiped away the alcohol with my sleeve.

Bowie went on without me as Bella relieved me of my Scotch and wrapped an arm around my waist. With her by my side, I was overcome with relief at the same time the grief I'd been holding at bay managed to bore deeper into my chest. Her concern made it all the more real.

"I heard on the way over. You could have called," Bella murmured as she went up on tiptoe for a quick kiss. I shook my head, but couldn't put into words why it hadn't been an option.

Alice applauded from across the room, clapping and laughing as she attempted to pull herself to sitting. "You okay over there?" Bella asked her agent.

"Ha!" Alice laughed. "Don't mind the drunk old lady in the corner." She gave up on standing and took another sip from her glass instead.

Bella's gaze fell on the nearly empty bottle of Johnny Walker on the coffee table.

"A drink?" I asked.

Bella eyed me askance. Neither of us was known to go for hard liquor on random afternoons. Little did she know I'd been drinking since mid-morning. No longer spinning, the room was rotating around me. I plunked down in the nearest chair.

"Did you know he was sick?" Bella asked.

I shook my head as I searched for my glass. Alice passed it to me from the end table.

"Should I cancel dinner?"

My head swam. "Could _you_ cook?" Alice broke out in another fit of giggles.

Bella shook her head pityingly and began retreating to the kitchen. "I'll call Seth."

I tried jumping from the chair, but it was more of a lurch. "No! No, no, no. Let's do dinner. You handle the knives. I'll direct. You can be sous chef."

Bella stopped in her tracks and surveilled the scene in the living room one more time. Records were strewn on various surfaces, there were some dirty plates and an old photo album Alice brought over, not to mention a few splatters of Scotch here and there. "Yeah?"

Alice sighed. "Alright, if this is happening, you, my friend, are gonna need some coffee." She pulled herself to her feet and patted me on the shoulder as she passed me by. "I'll make some for the both of us."

Bella and Alice exchanged meaningful looks as Alice brushed past on her way to the kitchen. She talked a good talk about coffee, but I noticed she'd taken her glass to the other room.

"Are you okay?" Bella asked, giving into the chaos and pulling me onto the couch with her.

I shook my head. "I'm not even close, babe."

"You sure about dinner?"

I wasn't sure about much that day, but I wouldn't let it interfere with Bella and Seth's parenting arrangement. I kept myself unobtrusively in the background for Sunday night dinners, tolerating Jared's subdued fawning and Seth's begrudging acceptance in order to help maintain family harmony. Bella didn't cook, though. From the time she was eighteen I could never trust her to get herself fed, let alone to host a weekly dinner party.

"How old were you when you guys saw him at Carnegie?" Bella asked.

I twined my fingers with hers. "Sixteen."

"Wow."

"Yeah," I agreed. "Wow. He was doing this shit from the time I was a kid. He kept it up until -" The record ended and instead of finishing my sentence, I peeled myself from where I sat and squatted unsteadily to flip the vinyl. I'd kept meaning to change things up with the sound system set-up in the living room. It had horrible acoustics, Bella's gear was outdated and underwhelming, not to mention no man should have to squat to change a record. Bella made fun of me and said I didn't want to crouch just because I was old. It was partly true.

"When did you meet him for the first time?"

I took a moment to think back. Decades flashed through my mind in a blur as I stood unsteadily to my feet. "God, it must have been in '78 at CB's with… the rest of the guys." I finished the sentence quickly, but I'd had enough to drink that my reflexes were slower than I'd have liked them to be.

"With Kate?" Bella asked.

xXxXx

 **May 10, 1978**

The crowd at CB's was off the rails that night. In addition to beer bottles the audience was also throwing their bodies at the stage. They'd make a mad dash and try to get hold of me - for a hug, for a piece of my shirt, for a handful of my hair. It was a strange rush, and with Jazz as my new drummer, along with Mike and Todd, we raged: loud, offbeat, out of tune, and angry. I stomped across the stage and screamed and the audience screamed back. I alternately yelled and grunted out lyrics about the pain I'd never been able to escape, except at times like that. I yelled until I was hoarse, until it had to end.

Finally, I leaned into the mic, holding on in order to simply hold myself upright. "Night," I huffed.

The crowd screamed and clapped, unwilling for it to be over. I didn't do encores, though. They were stupid. I loved hearing them scream, wanting more, knowing I was the one keeping it from them. Afterward I'd wander into the audience and strangers would climb all over me, seeking out my hands, my dick, and the deeper meaning to all of it. Little did they know I had nothing to give. It was the ultimate secret: I was empty inside.

Backstage Kate threw her arms around me. "You were fucking phenomenal," she whispered, her lips against my ear.

"Thanks." I looked for water. I found a warm beer.

"You know it was amazing, right?" she asked, trying to shake my shoulders and shake some sense into me. She always wanted me to see how incredible I was. I always wished I could.

Jasper clapped me on the back as he walked off to find Alice. Mike and Todd headed straight for the bar.

"There's someone I want you to meet." Kate grabbed my hand, pulling me away from the crowd. I was high on the performance. I wanted to revel. I wanted alcohol and adulation.

"Wrong way," I joked, tugging in the other direction.

"Come on, you wanker." Kate giggled. She bit my ear. "Trust me."

I trusted she was braless and that I could see her tits through her thin, white tank top. I trusted I knew what she had in mind, so I let her lead me down the dark, grafitted hallway.

Kate paused at the stage door. She bit her plump bottom lip. "Edward?"

"Here?" I asked, gathering her skirt in my fists.

Kate twisted from my grasp and pulled me through the door. "Edward, this is David."

"Shit," I gasped, as I took in the platinum blonde hair, blue-black eyes, and an oversized gold lame coat.

Kate wrapped an arm around the man's waist and rolled her eyes in mock exasperation. "I was finally able to extricate him from his adoring fans."

"Great show, Man." David Bowie held out his hand and I was at a loss for words, but I managed to clasp his fist in mine.

"I'm gonna go get Jasper and Alice, okay?" Kate asked, leaving me with one of my idols and a peck on the lips.

"I don't know who Jasper and Alice are, but it was all you up there. Brilliant."

"Th-thanks," I managed to stammer.

"You and Katy?" he asked, nodding to her receding silhouette.

"Not really," I admitted.

Kate turned, smiled, and blew me a kiss.

xXxXx

 **January 10th, 2016**

"She introduced us," I confessed.

Bella smiled like this knowledge didn't bother her as she made space for me on the couch. I knew her better than that. I pulled her feet onto my lap. "What about you?" I asked, pulling off her shoes one by one. "When was the first time you met him?"

"In '89 at Daisy. With you, you idiot." Bella kicked me playfully and pulled her feet back to her side of the sofa. "It was the _only_ time."

I needed to stop talking. I needed Alice to get back with some coffee. Of course I knew when Bella met Bowie. I'd introduced them. I'd wanted to keep the two of us hidden from the world, but Emmett somehow convinced me to leave the house. It was when I realized it wasn't our isolation making things perfect between us, it was Bella. I remember watching her from across the room that night, fresh-faced and fierce, with an easy smile and a self-conscious laugh, wearing my Dolls T-shirt. By the look of it, with her wild hand gestures and big eyes so intense, yet strung with stars, Bella was likely presenting Iggy and Bowie with a completely original and as yet unheard of analysis of one of their most recent pieces of work.

"You were beautiful that night," I gushed.

"You weren't so bad yourself," Bella replied, scooting closer.

"So fucking unflappable."

"Right! Scared to death."

"I doubt it. You were always fearless. It's one of the things I loved about you."

"Past tense?" she teased, leaning her head on my shoulder. "I'm not fearless these days? Or you don't love me anymore?"

"Hey, I can't joke like that today. My life changed when I saw him for the first time."

"Like when I saw you for the first time."

I wrapped an arm around Bella, pulling her closer. "Shit, was I your Bowie?"

Bella glanced up at me and melodramatically batted her eyes. "Depends how long you two dated."

I chuckled. "He never loved me the way I loved you."

Bella shook her head. "I loved you more back then. Entirely. Completely. Ready to swim the sound to get to your doorstep."

I understood teenage rockstar love. What would I have done if Patti Smith tried to hold a conversation with me when I was sixteen? I would have cum in my pants or pissed myself. I wouldn't have escaped the situation with clean underclothes, let alone leave her enchanted, yearning and conflicted.

"Our sixteens didn't compare."

"What if you didn't go to the show with Alice?" Bella asked.

"I don't even know. I probably would have ended up in some room alone, writing sci-fi fantasy novels. What about you? What if you didn't go to Jones Beach with Jake and Seth?"

"I don't know," Bella said, shaking her head, her eyes glazing over.

Bella would have been the same person, though, maybe with a little less heartbreak and a few more kids. Not me, though. If I'd never run into Bella I was certain I'd be dead. She was the first reason I found to really seek treatment. She was the reason I stuck it out.

"We don't talk about that night," Bella murmured.

We didn't. I met a child one night when I was thirty-one, while I was running away from my life. She stopped me in my tracks, and for the first time in a long time she made me see how beautiful the world could be through another pair of eyes. I knew enough to stay away, but I was too selfish to completely let her go. We're older now. We're both adults. I'm not proud of my actions, but I would never take them back.

I shook my head. "No." My eyes were wet. I was a drunken fool.

xXxXx

 **June 13th, 1987**

After three relentless months on the road, Jasper, Marcus, Caius and the rest of us ended up on the south shore of Long Island in the sweltering summertime heat. We had one more show before we could finally break, and I was looking forward to two solitary days with no one to feel accountable for but myself. While our label found someone to keep me on the straight and narrow, they hadn't given the same consideration to Jasper who was once again newly sober. Alice was sick as a dog the last half of the tour, so it somehow fell to me to look after her husband. Everyone knew I could hardly take care of myself, so how in the world was I supposed to look after another grown man who was hell bent on getting high?

I couldn't blow off steam with Cauis and Marcus, either. Those days they were feeling left behind by Aro, who was pushing an image of me as a rising star. I fought back against it at first, but the truth was there was a growing gulf between us. An argument with Caius in Cleveland would have certainly come to blows if Emmett hadn't stepped in and broken it up.

So when they all wanted to back out of the show because of the rain, I wasn't fucking having it. The only thing that could make me feel close to whole was the audience, and I wasn't leaving without the burst of adrenaline - the third best thing to coke or one of my uncontrollable, internal highs.

I reveled in the audience that night. Almost everyone had left because of the drenching rain, and anyone who stayed rushed to the floor in front of the stage. I kicked water from the stage into their faces and they fucking loved it. I screamed like I used to in my younger, more punk rock days. It was personal again, I could see each of their faces again. It was intimate and decadent, it was insane - something I knew about. I fell in love with the audience and they loved me back.

The knot of kids yelled my name in the pounding rain. Soaked to the bone, water poured in rivulets so my hair clung to my face, my jeans hung heavy on my hips, and rain sploshed inside my boots. I stood and screamed in a downpour while the rest of the fuckers on stage wouldn't stand with me and wanted to go their own way. Finally, at the end, clothing seemed meaningless since it was stuck to my skin, so I pulled my shirt over my head, flung it into the crowd, and watched as it spun in the air, twirling and spraying rainwater before it fell into the writhing whorl below.

My heart flipped in my chest as I watched them pulling desperately, trying to get a piece of me. Those kids each wanted to fill up the gnawing hole in their gut, and they were here hoping song lyrics and a scrap of cotton might be the recipe for completion. For a second or two I felt like we were all there searching together and I was hopeful they might come away with something useful. Then I blinked and I was cold and alone on the stage. It was over and I could get the hell out of there and leave it all behind.

"What the fuck was that?" Caius spat, meeting me in the wings.

"It was a fucking show." I knew what he meant. I'd been doing my own shit on stage, counting on the rest of them to keep up.

"Not like that, Ed. What the hell were you doing out there?"

"You don't fucking like it, then -"

"Then what?" he challenged, stepping in front of me, stopping me in my tracks. Caius was my height, but built like a linebacker. We'd known each other for more than a decade, and I wasn't sure I'd ever seen him as angry as he was at that moment. "Say it," he demanded. "Say it to my face."

"Edward!" Alice called, threading her way through the crowd. "Where's Jasper?" She inserted her little body between me and Caius, glancing innocently between the two of us, like she hadn't a clue in the world the man wanted to hit me for fucking with the set. Caius rolled his eyes and stomped away, leaving a tiny puddle in his wake.

I sighed with relief and took a towel one of the stage hands offered, trying my best to dry my chest and to wring out my hair. "Thanks, Alice."

"No, really. Have you seen Jasper?"

"Everyone's seen Jasper. He was just on stage."

"Very funny. Where'd he go?" She stood on tiptoe, trying to peer a little higher than her four inch heels allowed.

"To the green room? To the can? I'm not his keeper."

Alice folded her arms across her chest. I noticed with some jealousy she was completely dry, from her spiky hair to her patent leather pumps. Not to mention she was wearing a shirt.

" _Now_ you're all hands off. Sure."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I challenged.

"I think you know."

"Christ. I'm tired of people blaming me for things they won't even say out loud. Jasper makes his own decisions and I have absolutely no clue where he is right now, although I could fucking guess."

"I don't understand how you could -"

"Edward! Edward!" Aro shouted, pushing past the backstage mob. "Amazing show, my man."

"This isn't over for a second, Edward. After everything I deserve better than this."

Aro greeted Alice with a tight smile and a perfunctory kiss on the cheek. Alice withered like she'd been poisoned and I took the opportunity while they were distracted to start walking toward my dressing room. A dry shirt and a wallet and I could get the fuck out of there. All too soon, Aro was following close behind. I could tell by the way my skin crawled in his presence. I lengthened my strides.

"You have a minute?" he asked, trying to keep up.

"Not really." I tried to avoid eye contact with the crew. I didn't want to hear their false praise. Even worse, I didn't want to have to explain what the hell I'd been doing on stage.

"I flew someone in for tonight. Travis from L.A. I told him he had to see you with his own eyes. How the audience eats you up."

Aro grabbed my shoulder and I turned to face the man who was steadily making we a very wealthy, very well-known musician. I couldn't help feeling like I was being used, though, and Aro's touch left me sick to my stomach.

"You're amazing out there, son. You ever think -"

"No, I never think."

"You're limiting yourself."

"I'm not having this conversation, not now, not without a shirt and some dry clothes. Not in a hallway, and not before we head back to the studio next week."

"You should meet with Travis. Dry off. There's a bar not far from here - quiet, private."

"Yeah, whatever. Give me a few." I ducked into my dressing room, planning to quickly change and then to slip out with Emmett before Aro knew what had happened. Instead I found Marcus bare-assed, kissing some topless girl, while another knelt on the ground in front of him.

"Oh my god, it's him!" the topless girl screeched. "Jess! It's Edward Cullen!"

Jess' eyes went wide from where she knelt and her friend tried to peel herself from Marcus' grasp, but I bolted from the room and ducked into the band's dressing room. Before I could spot Jasper passed out in a corner, I pulled on the first random t-shirt I spotted and ducked out a side entrance I'd propped open earlier in the evening.

Outside and alone I felt a million times lighter. The air was cool and damp after the passing summer storm and I breathed a sigh of relief, attempting to put as much distance between myself and the stadium as possible. I took a deep breath. Then another. I spotted fireflies blinking in the underbrush, and calm water lapped lazily along the edge of the bay. I set off for the old pier, the same place Emmett found me the last time we played there, knowing he was smart enough to track me down, glad this time he wouldn't find me with a needle in my arm.

Eventually I'd have to have the discussion with Aro. I knew he wanted to see me on my own, but I also knew he didn't really give a shit about me. It felt like I was the only person standing in the way of the total destruction of the band. The thing is, I didn't know if I had it in me to defend its existence anymore. Caius resented me. Marcus fucked whatever walked in his direction. Jasper Whitlock was my best friend in the entire world, but he'd sure as shit sell me into slavery for enough smack. Those days Jasper broke Alice's heart on a daily basis, and as far as I could tell she blamed me for it more with each passing day.

Aro wanted to see me on my own, and to the rest of them that was my fault. Jasper was high as a kite and, according to Alice, it was my fault. Two kids were getting screwed in my dressing room. Who's fault was that? Who were they there looking for in the first place? You guessed it.

Fault found its home in me. It always had; it always would. It was born into me and flowed through my veins. Sometimes it made me soar and sometimes it dragged me so far down I couldn't imagine getting up again. It's why my mom locked me away, it's why they'd hooked me up to electrodes - to try to kill the faulty piece of me that had been fucking up from the beginning.

The inborn unworthiness is why I'd written a poem when I was a kid asking my parents to love me despite who I was. Back in the early days I'd screamed the words into the mic. Then when we recorded it for The Masens demo, Alice suggested a quieter take. Jasper tapped out something swinging and slow, and like a lullaby the words fell from my lips. The same words rippled out into the air around me that night, like my thoughts come to life. An octave higher, hesitant yet plaintive, the truth was sung sweetly, drifting on the damp breeze from the bay. Someone was using my words, asking my parents to like me for the person I was, imperfections and all.

I followed my song, and finally saw the slender outline of a girl on her back, lying on the old wooden pier. Her dark hair was wild about her head and my face was plastered across her tits, She sang and drew me in her direction like those ancient stories of sirens. If sirens had sung the sailors own songs they surely would have been irrevocably lost.

But as I came closer, my heart dropped. The girl with the sweet voice was no more than a child. Her face was pink and pretty and raindrops were hung like jewels in her hair. She had her hand over her nose, holding what I could only guess was a piece of the T-shirt I'd thrown into the audience. I began walking away, wondering where else I could hide myself so Emmett could come find me, but the girl stirred and sighed and I took a second look.

"What do you want now?" she groaned. Her dramatic delivery made me want to laugh out loud. I managed to hold it in, but I couldn't quell the smile that spread over my face.

"Want? I want to take a seat."

The girl's eyes shot open. She'd come face to face with an idol. I'd come face to face with the person who would change my life forever. She'd lend me enough of her confidence and light that The Masen's next album would appeal to a much wider audience, she'd finally help me feel a sense of home, she'd hold out hope for me when I had none, and her trust would give me the strength to try to be a better man, even after she was no longer there.

Yet somehow along the way, getting Bella back had become my endgame. I'd stopped reaching. I'd become a man without a stereo system or a piano. I'd retired myself without realizing it. I hadn't made anything beside a meal in years.

xXxXx

 **January 10th, 2016**

Alice Brandon cleared her throat, and Bella glanced up from our embrace to see her standing in the doorway holding a steaming mug in each hand. Her eyes sparkled and her smile was sad as a tear trickled down her cheek.

"This is enough," she murmured. Those words held decades long meaning for Alice and I. I bit my lip and Bella jumped up from the couch.

"Alice, I'm sorry. You lost him too," she said, helping her with the coffee before wrapping her arms around her friend.

"I should find Jasper," Alice mumbled, pulling herself loose. "Lots of loss today."

"You can't drive," Bella countered.

Alice shook her head. "I'm fine. Lyft. You've got dinner tonight. Good luck with that." Alice winked at me as she gathered her things and left me with a peck on the cheek. "Take care, you weirdo."

 **xXxXx**

 **A/N: I'm a slower writer these days, and with characters I love this much I want to make sure I take the time to get it right. I'll update when I can. I hope you come along for the ride. xoxo ~BDC**


	2. Personality Crisis

**Twilight is not by me.**

 **SereneInNC is my fearless beta.**

 **This is a companion to There is a Light. You can find a link to it on my author page.**

 **Enjoy...**

 **xXxXx**

 **Present Day - June 7, 2018**

"I hadn't realized Bowie was such an influence on your work. Would you say this album and tour were inspired by _Blackstar_?" Jim asks.

Jim's theory sounds reasonable but it's overly simplistic.

"You say you've read _Groupie_?" I reply by way of a question.

Jim cocks his head. "Well, yes."

"At the end of _Groupie_ Isabella leaves readers with a traditional happily ever after."

Jim smiles. "You and Isabella Swan, you mean? That was crazy after all that time."

"Certifiably insane, perhaps. But yes, despite countless obstacles Bella and I found a way back to one another. The thing about real life though, is that it goes on after the story's over."

"And _Groupie_ ended in -"

"In 2011. After I moved to San Francisco Bella continued to publish. My daughter was eventually admitted to university. My step-daughter's still so young she's trying out everything. She might want to be a dancer, or a singer, or the leader of a youth uprising. However I was frozen in time, afraid to make any changes. Afraid it might ruin my happy ending.

 **xXxXx**

 **February 14th, 2016**

After news of David's death I was left profoundly bereft and restless. I went searching through old photos, then through old online reviews of shows from back in the day. Afterwards I went searching for new stereo equipment, and then through old two-inch tape. Finally, I was driven across the Atlantic. Lizzy was in her first year at King's College, and I thought getting acquainted with this new version of my daughter might put right what had somehow gone wrong. Yet between her studies and her desire to keep her friends separate from her parents, it left me on my own more than I would have liked.

When Lizzy was younger I'd fly in for a week each month and we'd visit her favorite museums, take in shows in the West End, and cook elaborate meals that included all of our favorite foods and made culinary sense to just the two of us. It was perfect. It was a balance I maintained for almost five years. This trip seemed to confirm the balance had been lost.

I fidgeted on the flight back home and couldn't get comfortable. I tried to close my eyes. I asked for some chamomile tea, but hours passed and sleep wouldn't come. At times like those I always felt fear edge its way up my spine. For a good portion of my life sleeplessness was one of the first signs I was slipping into mania. Of course, it had been many, many years since I'd last felt the electric unease of a manic phase. These days I kept my moods carefully controlled, but worry tended to return anyway.

Some habits are hard to break, and I'd been scared of mania since I was a kid. I worried before I even had words for the irresistible and dangerous moods that would take over my dad. Mom and I lived in fear of its consequences, all the while falling in love all over again with the man who would emerge: someone who was unguarded with how much he cherished his family and the world around us, his only concern that we enjoy it all with him.

I stopped worrying when it began happening to me, though. I left the worrying to my mother when I was sixteen, because for the first time I felt like Superman. I stayed up through the night and wrote and composed until my mom raised her voice, equal parts angry and afraid. She sent me to my room and I wrote some more, filling pages and pages or finishing books in a sitting. For the first time ever I didn't need to worry. I didn't need food. I didn't need sleep.

Who needed sleep when there was so much out there I hadn't known existed? Who needed sleep after Alice sat at my desk one afternoon and found my writing and said it was pretty good? Who could sleep after she looked up from my notebook like she was just seeing me for the first time and asked me to go to the Broadway Central with her? Who could sleep after I sat next to Alice in her shiny silver dress where you could see the outline of her nipples through the thin fabric, while watching Patti Smith read filthy poems about how it felt when she came? Who could sleep with the knowledge that girls came? How did girls come? Did Alice come? I knew how I came. I perfected the art in the early morning hours.

Who could sleep after seeing the Dolls for the first time? Who could sleep when there were guys dressed in drag, screaming into a mic and having the time of their lives? Who could sleep when I could scream just like they could? Who could sleep when anything was suddenly possible? That was it for me. I didn't think I'd ever sleep again.

Eventually I learned to worry again. Mania was pure exuberance, and like anything that comes on with such overwhelming force, its potential for destruction could be deadly. At best it ended in deep depression, and worst it left the people I loved broken in its wake, like wreckage after a storm.

I wasn't manic on the plane on Valentine's Day, 2016, though. I was simply excited to get back home to Bella, and Bella made me feel as manic as my medication allowed. The knowledge I was returning to her temporarily wiped away the uneasiness I'd been grappling with for weeks. I tucked away my laptop and forgot about the blank, blue-lit screen. I took out my earbuds. The Dolls worked for me when I was sixteen, but they hadn't inspired any words from my fingertips in little lifetimes. I had Bella and that made me happier than anything else in the world.

Returning to her always made me giddy. Tonight I wasn't manic. Tonight my unease was just a shadow of what I felt the first time I flew back home to Bella Swan.

xXxXx

 **May 17th, 1989**

I'd left Kate's flat a week ago with excuses, saying I didn't want to keep her awake, ignoring the fact she didn't care. I left Kate's and took just one thing: a postcard, which I kept folded in my back pocket. I kept it there when I sat down at the piano in the studio. I kept it there when I sat in front of my notebook through the night. Then I'd take it out and read it for the thousandth time.

 **I'm not sure if this address will work, but if someone there can get this to Edward Cullen I would be really grateful.**

 **Edward,**

 **The semester's over in a couple of weeks and I wanted to know if it's okay if I stay for the summer. There's a seminar I'd like to take at school. I've also got a job I don't want to lose, and I don't want to spend all my savings on a flight to Washington state.**

 **You never gave me a time limit, but we never talked about the summer, either. I guess I'll probably stay if I don't hear from you because the city is already my home, and Washington state is much too far away. I'm almost afraid that if I leave I'll never get back, and if I never get back I'll probably never see you again.**

 **~ Bella**

They were the first words of hers I'd read since I left her in New York in the fall. I was alternately overjoyed she'd be staying on and full of fear that she might disappear again.

I didn't reply. What would I say? Would I tell her every song I wrote these past few months was for her? Would I tell her I could write nothing else? If I didn't reply she said she would stay, and if she stayed I might see her again.

Instead of going back to Kate's, I walked the streets at night or sat on a bench in Westfield Park. I was five thousand miles from my real home, and I felt every one of those miles like a five thousand mile chain was pulling me across the sea. I opened my journal and used hundreds of different phrases to write about how I wanted to go home. I listed dozens of reasons, but only one that mattered.

I got together with Caius, Marcus and Jasper and we jammed. They jammed. I watched them gel and I wasn't a part of it. Aside from old Masen's songs, nothing new would come, except at night in front of my notebook. I filled pages. It was beautiful. She was beautiful. She wasn't technically a kid. She was eighteen, but a decent human being would treat her like she was still a kid. The postcard was proof she was still living in my apartment and that she wanted to see me again. Did she go through my things? I wanted her to go through my things. I wanted her fingers on the clothes in my closet. I wanted her body in my bed.

Emmett took me aside and asked me out to lunch. I could hardly focus enough to order, and I definitely couldn't eat. My leg shook nervously.

"Are you okay, Ed?"

"I want to go home."

"Yeah, but you just got back in the studio."

I shook my head. "My head's not in the studio, Em."

I tore at a hangnail. Emmett glanced at my hands and I tried to hide how my fingertips were bloody and chewed raw. His eyes went wide, then soft and concerned. It was a look I remembered from my mom, first with my dad, then with me.

"What do you need, Ed?"

"Someplace besides Kate's, I guess."

"You guys having trouble?"

"Trouble? Ha!"

Emmett narrowed his eyes. He didn't remember his nickname for Bella. _I_ remembered his nickname for Bella. I remembered everything about Bella. Her eyes were too big for her heart-shaped face. Her legs were too long for her short stature. Her thoughts were too old for her teenage body. The way her hair curled just over the tips of her...

She was a kid. She was the kid I took in and took care of, like Alice took me in and took care of me when I was a kid. I was paying it forward. But I grew up and she grew up and now she wasn't a kid anymore.

She was staying in my home so I might get to see her again.

I could stay in London and I could get a flat of my own. Then I could ask Bella to send a picture. Then I would be a disgusting old man. Then she would leave. Then I would never see her again. I couldn't write back. What would I write? I pulled out my notebook. I'd written page after page but I couldn't write any of those words to her.

"Ed? Yo, Ed!" Emmett raised his voice.

I startled and glanced across at Emmett. His pint slipped in the condensation on the tabletop. I resisted the urge to push it over the edge. He ran a hand nervously through his hair. He reached out and grabbed my shaking hand. "Do you have a doctor over here?"

"I want to go home, Emmett."

"But you can't just leave, can you? What about Aro?"

What about Aro? How did Aro factor into this? I was lost. I pulled my hand from Emmett's and grabbed hold of my notebook. Then I pulled out the postcard. Then I unfolded and folded it again. It was becoming worn at the edges. I worried it might rip in two and flattened it on the tabletop.

"You need a doctor. I'll call Alice. Maybe she has some ideas. Let's get you a room where I'm staying. We'll get a suite, okay?"

I shrugged. I followed Emmett back to his hotel. Alice met us there and they talked and I left when they started to argue.

I found a phone in the lobby and dialed her number. Then I heard her voice on the other end.

" _Hello?_ " she asked. She was anxious. I heard it even over the phone. When had we spoken last?

"Kate?"

There was a sigh of relief on the other end. " _Edward? Edward, I miss you. Where are you?_ "

"I've been busy in the studio."

" _Where are you sleeping?_ "

"I'm not sleeping."

" _You know I don't care. Come home and you can keep me awake? I swear I can keep up._ "

"I'll annoy the crap out of you."

" _Come home and let me be the judge of that._ "

"Have you seen my Specials T?"

The line went momentarily silent. " _What_?" She was confused. She was exasperated.

It was technically Jasper's shirt. It was too small. _She_ 'd worn it. I wanted to touch it. I wanted to feel the cotton stretch tight over my chest and think of her in it. I wrote about it. It was embarrassing and those words would never see the light of day.

"A T-shirt. The Specials?" I prompted.

" _I heard you. It's just -_ "

"It's probably in the bag in the back of your closet with the stuff I never unpacked."

The T-shirt was in that bag.

" _Hold on_." I heard the phone clatter against a countertop. I heard footsteps. I heard rustling. Then there was silence.

"Kate?"

Seconds ticked by.

"Kate? Kate!"

" _Edward?_ "

"Did you find it?"

" _Yeah, but Edward -_ "

"Give me ten minutes."

When I showed up at Kate's place I found the T-shirt folded on the little table in the entryway. On top of the T-shirt was a postcard. It was different from the one in my pocket. It was one I'd written, but never sent. Apparently I'd stashed it in the bag I'd never unpacked.

 **Merry Christmas, Bella. It's cold here in London. I hope you're warm. I hope you've figured out how to use the flue so you can have a fire. I hope you've found the closet with the extra blankets. If you haven't, it's the closet on the left in my room.**

 **Sometimes I wish I could look out the window and see you staring back so I'd know you're safe and warm and if you've been eating and sleeping.**

 **I haven't given you the opportunity to write back and I miss the reassurance your letters bring. I miss your voice. I miss the way your words look on the page. I miss the smudges your hand makes as you write. I miss having stationary touched by your fingertips. We've hardly spent three hours with one another, but I miss you more with each passing day.**

"Who the hell is Bella?" Kate demanded.

I'd sent another postcard instead; one adorned with a picture of the snow-covered Parliament building. Instead, I'd written:

 _ **Stay warm. ~Edward**_

I left a return address and months later Bella wrote back. Her postcard was folded in my back pocket.

"Who the hell is Bella?" Kate repeated.

"Mind your business," I spat, retreating to the bedroom. Kate followed, pushing open the door.

"This isn't my business?"

" _She_ certainly is not your business."

"Who the bloody hell is Bella?"

"She's no one, Kate. She's staying in my place while I'm gone." Those words hurt. Bella mattered more to me than I mattered to myself. When had that happened? How had it happened?

"The child?" Kate asked in disbelief.

I closed my eyes. This was not a conversation I wanted to have, ever, with anyone, and certainly not with Kate Denali, of all fucking people.

"She's not a child."

Bella wasn't a child. She was eighteen. She was living on her own, in my apartment.

I hardly heard the one-sided argument Kate waged with me that afternoon. I was unfair. I'd made promises. I'd said things. I was leaving her again. I took my clothes. I took a bottle of pills from the bathroom. I took a few books. I took my unsent postcard and added it to the companion postcard in my back pocket. I took a cab to Heathrow before Emmett, Alice or Aro could find me.

I took a pill on the flight back to New York so I'd be able to sit still. Eventually my nerves calmed and I knew I was almost normal. My leg didn't shake. My mind cleared. I slept fitfully on the flight and fidgetted again in the cab. Another pill and I was smooth as sailing over the Queensborough bridge.

My heart raced as the elevator climbed, but she wasn't home.

The phone rang and it was Aro. I told him it was over. There would be consequences. There would be penalties. He owned me, or something, but he couldn't touch me because I was so close to home. I was in my safe place with my piano, and I checked in the old room I'd prepared for Alice years ago and someone was living in it. She was out, but her things were there. I closed the bedroom door, so close to peace.

I sat at my piano and I played her song and told myself she'd be back. And it sounded perfect.

I stripped and took a shower because it had been days or a week and because I hoped she would come home. And I took another pill and I was calm. And I stood dripping in my bedroom and I heard the click of the front door. And I looked up and Bella smiled and finally, for the first time, I was home.

xXxXx

 **February 14th, 2016**

Bella practically ran to meet me at the baggage claim. "Happy Valentine's Day!" she cheered, throwing her arms around me, taking me by surprise. We weren't ones for Hallmark holidays, but I didn't mind the embrace. I'd just spent a week's worth of lonely nights in my tiny Chelsea flat.

"Fuck Valentine's. I'm just happy to be home," I mumbled as I sought out Bella's lips. It was a relief to be back in her arms, even if it meant a sudden re-entry to Sunday night family dinners with the extended Swan/Clearwater clan.

Bella hummed and held me tight. "I'm glad. You've been so down lately."

Our noses touched and I went in for another kiss. "I'm fine, babe. I'll figure it out."

Bella tugged me toward the parking lot. "We should get back."

"Dinner?" I asked apprehensively.

"Nope. Jared planned something uber romantic and over the top for him and Seth, so it's just me, you and Thea. Take-out? Thai?"

"Sounds perfect." I wrapped an arm around her waist and sighed, glad for time with just the three of us. Bella smiled up at me.

"How's Lizzy?"

"Brilliant. Busy."

"You think she'll come out this summer?"

"She mentioned a few study abroad programs, but she'd better make time for San Francisco." I wondered how we'd manage it, though. The young woman I'd just left in London wouldn't relish sharing a room with a twelve year old who hardly stopped speaking long enough to catch her breath. Would Lizzy want a hotel room? Airbnb?

"I made a few changes while you were gone," Bella began. She waited, stealing glances at me out of the corner of her eyes.

"Changes?"

"Um, yeah," Bella hedged. "I hope you approve." She fidgeted with the snaps on her jacket pockets.

I laughed. "What kind of changes?" Bella was a constant. The tiniest alteration to her home, whether a new print or a new vase, could throw her into days of deep deliberations. Any minor modification she'd grappled with over the past week was likely to be lost on me.

"Just wait until we get home. I think you'll like it. I really do." Bella gnawed at her lip as we waited for the light. I wasn't sure if she was trying to comfort me or calm her own nerves.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"Are you?" she countered. I wasn't certain how to answer. My life was the same as when I'd first moved to San Francisco. It was everything I'd wanted for more years than I cared to count. It was perfect. There was nothing wrong in our world.

xXxXx

 **November 19, 2011**

"Edwaaaard! Eeeeedward!"

I heard little feet stomping in my direction before I spotted the bouncing brown curls darting through the baggage collection area of the San Francisco airport. "Edward!" Thea yelled and threw her arms around my thighs, nestling her head right up against my crotch. I scooped her up to avoid any prolonged awkwardness and she clung to me like a monkey.

"Mommy told me about the story just like you said she should. The _whole_ story. You sang weird music, Edward, and Mommy listened to it when she was sad because grandma and grandpa were getting a divorce. Do you know what a divorce is?"

"I do, Little One. Where's your mom?" I asked, rotating with Bella's daughter in my arms so I could get a three-hundred and sixty degree view of the crowd. Finally, when I'd almost come full circle, there she was, right in front of me.

"Here," Bella said, blushing furiously and raising her hand. Her smile was broad and beautiful.

"I found him!" Thea cheered from my arms, bouncing up and down. "Edward's here, Mommy! Edward, are you going to come see me on the big stage? I'm an angel. I can show you my dance at home. Are you coming to see our home?"

I bit my bottom lip and glanced at Bella for some direction. I ached to take her in my otherwise occupied arms, but Thea showed no inclination to stand on her own, and I wasn't a man to argue with small girls.

"I wanna show Edward my room and my Barbies and my stuffed animals. And you can show Edward your room too. Wait..." Little One's forehead scrunched up and she was like a miniature version of Bella. "But you already saw Mommy's room, didn't you?" she asked accusingly.

"What?" Bella and I asked in unison. How much of this story did Bella tell?

"When you came here when I was at Daddy's house. You were at our home in secret. You saw our whole house, but I didn't see you."

"You're right," Bella admitted. "Edward's seen it already."

"But I've never been inside your room," I assured her. Of course I'd peeked in from time to time.

"Do you want to check into your hotel first?" Bella asked.

"Not in the slightest. There's plenty of time for that. Take me home?"

"Home." The word lingered on Bella's lips before it was borne on the air between us. Her presence was synonymous with the word. She moved into my apartment when she was eighteen and for the first time I had a home. I'd lived all over the world in the interim, but this would only be my second. I was both overjoyed and relieved. I juggled Thea and freed an arm, pulling Bella to my side. She rested her head on my shoulder, and holding the two of them I was complete.

"We're going out to dinner, Edward," Thea informed me quietly as she held my chest in her little arms. "I promised I'd be good."

"Dinner? Really?" I hadn't flown across the country for a meal.

"I thought something edible might be appropriate for your first night. Something besides chicken nuggets and mac and cheese," Bella explained.

Thea shook her head. "There's nothing wrong with mac and cheese, Mommy."

"Have you ever had mac and cheese that doesn't come from the box?" I asked the little girl in my arms. Thea's eyes went wide with wonder and I laughed. "Did you even know it comes that way?"

Thea whipped her head from side to side and I held on tight as I managed to twine my fingers with Bella's. "How about dinner at home? I'll cook. I could see Thea's room. Maybe I could see your room too? After dinner?"

"But you must be exhausted."

"I don't know what I am. I'm fuc-, I'm over the moon. I'm complete. Take me home?"

I tried for a kiss, a peck on the lips. It was the first time we'd done more than hold hands in front of her daughter, and for once, Thea didn't say a word. Bella sighed, leaning in. I'd asked for everything, and it was all literally within my grasp.

"If you're cooking we might need to swing by the grocery store," Bella admitted somewhat breathlessly. Her sexy shopping voice made me laugh. Yeah, I'd definitely see her bedroom later.

"Lead the way. You know I'd follow you anywhere."

We grocery shopped and I imagine we looked like any other happy family. Thea pouted over sugary cereal and wanted to be held, then to walk, and then to try to fit into the front of the cart. I helped Bella unpack groceries and Thea attempted to help with dinner. She was more headstrong than Lizzy had ever been at her age, so I quickly learned I'd have to think two steps ahead of the little girl if we didn't want to burn down the house. I wanted to live in that house, so I kept a close eye. After dinner I was introduced to each of Thea's stuffed animals, then to her Barbie dolls who all wore tutus, and then she handed me a little yellow ball of feathers and fluff.

"You already know him, Edward," Thea explained matter-of-factly.

I did know the chick. "What's his name?" I asked, trying to ignore the way my heart was threatening to climb out of my throat.

"Edward," she replied with a sigh. Yes, he was obviously an Edward.

"You kept Edward all this time?"

Thea shook her head as she lined her other stuffed animals up against her pink polka-dotted wall. "Daddy just gave him to me. He kept him since I was a baby, then he gave him to me later. You knew when I was born?"

"I did, Little One. I was very happy for your mom."

Thea plopped to the ground in front of me and petted the chick in my hands. "Mommy wasn't supposed to have babies in her belly anymore, you know."

I glanced out the window at the green and gray of the San Francisco twilight. As promised, Bella had found a way to tell Thea our entire story, and amazingly the little girl still seemed to want me in her life. So did Bella. It was a responsibility I didn't take lightly. I attempted to focus on that miraculous stroke of luck instead of the way this decades old grief was edging in on my perfect night.

"Does the other baby that died make you sad?" Thea asked, plucking the little thing from my hands.

Chicken Edward went to play with the Barbies, while human Edward struggled with a six year old's cross-examination. I searched for simple words. "It was one of the saddest times in my whole life, but it doesn't compare to what it was like for your mom all alone. It's my biggest regret."

"Mommy said you get sad sometimes."

Thea might look like her mother, but she'd clearly learned interrogation tactics from her dad. I took a deep breath and then took the little girl's hands in mine. "It's true, Little One. I can get very sad or very happy, but I take medicine and it helps keep all of that away."

"So I can take medicine when I get sad?"

"For most people a little sadness is a good thing. It helps us to see how amazing all of the happy times are. It lets us know the difference."

Thea pursed her lips and cocked her head as she thought it through. "Then why do you need medicine?"

"My happiness and sadness don't work the same way as yours or your mom's. I wish it did."

"What about Daddy?" she asked.

"I think he gets happy and sad the same exact way you and your mom get happy and sad."

Thea nodded. "Okay. That's good."

"It is."

"Ahem." Thea and I glanced up to see Bella leaning in the doorway. "It's time for bed, Little One."

xXxXx

I wandered through Bella's home while she put her daughter to sleep. It was open, airy and very clean. Her kitchen was spotless; her cupboards were organized, if not uninspired. Toys were scattered over the living room floor, but each pillow looked perfectly plumped. Her office reminded me of my library in New York with a built-in bookcase, a large comfortable armchair, and a wood-burning stove in lieu of a fireplace. Small photos dotted the shelves behind her desk. Thea and Seth smiled up at me from the shores of a beach. Bella and Seth stood arm in arm on the red carpet at the premier of her first film. Bella and Rosalie wore torn jeans and hoodies and laughed as they sat on the edge of the fountain in Washington Square Park.

Along the edge of the topmost shelf I spotted a photo I'd never seen before. It was a close-up of three suburban, punk rock kids. Bella looked a little younger than when we'd first met and she sported half a head of shaved hair, with eyes lined in black and blood-red lips. Her smile was innocent and open, unselfconscious. Seth towered over her. His dark hair fell into his eyes as he laughed and hugged Bella tight. I didn't recognize the third face in the photo, but I knew the kid with the floppy mohawk and flat eyes must have been Jacob. I wondered if Bella realized she had a type, because while Jacob and I were separated by decades and death, in that moment we were more the same than I'd ever realized. He'd been profoundly sad even then.

"Hey there," Bella said, wrapping her arms around me from behind.

I plucked the photo from the shelf. "Where'd this come from?"

"I found it going through some old stuff. Thea thinks I two-timed her dad, so I keep it up there and out of eye-shot. It's a good photo, though. It's the only picture I have of him."

"Jake?"

"Yeah. This is mostly how I remember him, you know? As a kid who loved us both."

I placed the photo back on the shelf.

Bella wrapped her arms tighter, resting her head against my back. I felt the comforting rise and fall of her chest. I sighed.

"Is Thea asleep?"

"Not quite. With you in San Francisco she may never sleep again."

I turned around and tipped Bella's chin, holding her close, gazing into the warmth of her eyes. Her smile matched the one from the photo. So many years had passed, I'd never get enough of her in this lifetime. "With me in San Francisco _you_ may never sleep again."

"Edward, I -"

I didn't know what Bella had to say, but I wasn't going to chance her bringing up the hotel. Not yet. I pressed my lips to hers and deftly trailed my fingers along the line of buttons between her breasts, unfastening first one, then the next, slowly, and steadily. True warmth lay in the feel of my skin against hers. My hands itched, my body ached. I was getting closer.

I let the kisses build until she sighed against my lips and I could feel her hands gripping my belt loops, then slipping around and lower, pulling our hips together. With the last button freed, I pulled away and stepped back to survey my work. Bella was pink-cheeked and panting, her eyes heavy lidded and black as night. Her chest rose and fell and her nipples strained against her thin cotton bra.

"Do I really get to do this any night I want?"

A smile spread across Bella's face. "I love you," she murmured. "I hope so."

"My God."

Bella's eyes sparkled. "This is real?"

It was. And as much as I wanted to touch, I waited for Bella to close the space between us, to show that after all this time holding me at arms' length, this was a reality she was claiming. It took less than the length of a breath for her to take a step, then thread her fingers through my hair and for her lips to claim mine this time. Finally, my fingers trailed over soft skin, between her breasts, over her ribs, along her back.

Our kisses were slow. There was no reason to rush. We had all the time in the world. We had until morning, and then all day, and then the next night. Then we could repeat the cycle forever. So I teased and nipped and gently pressed fingertips over tender flesh. I tugged at her hair, then pulled down a bra strap. After minutes or an infinity, my fingers found her fly. Bella flinched and pulled away.

"Wait," she panted.

"Really? For what?"

Bella grinned and took me by the hand. "You said you wanted to see my room."

"And we've established I've been there, done…"

Bella giggled and tugged at my hand. "Come on. I have something to show you."

Her bedroom looked the same as the last time I'd seen it, but Bella shrugged off her shirt and I thought maybe she wanted to show me two things in particular. I went for the clasp of her bra, but she batted me away. "You've seen these already."

"I'd like to see them again."

Bella disentangled her limbs from mine, strode across the room and flung open a closet door revealing… nothing. Bare cedar-lined shelves stood empty in the light from a solitary bulb. She stepped aside, proud and suddenly anxious.

"This is where I found the picture of Jake. I cleaned it out last week."

"Nice work?" I crossed the room, angling for a closer inspection.

"I know we agreed to do this gradually. I know you have a hotel room waiting. I know we talked about maybe buying a new house together, but I want you to -"

My lips collided with hers, and then I had her in my arms, then in the bed beneath me. Her bed. Our bed?

"Is that a -"

"Yes," I replied, pulling off pants, pulling off panties. "Yes, it is." I had no time for my own clothes, just a fly, just a tug. I needed her, all of her: her skin underneath my fingertips, her lips pressed to mine, her body against me, underneath me, around me, inside. I held, I watched, I pushed, and finally I took her. All of her. Finally she let me. Given permission, I took her hard and I took her so she knew that after decades I had all I'd ever wanted, and I'd want her forever.

The second time was slower. The second time she smiled down at me as she slowly pulled off the rest of my clothing. The second time I watched her as she sighed and let things slowly build between us. And that night I didn't have to worry about erasing my presence from her house the next morning. I didn't lose sleep with concern about waking in time to catch a flight. I worried about pulling on boxers and a T shirt because we were sharing the home with a six year old, and it made me inexplicably pleased.

"So, I'm staying?" I asked as I climbed back into bed. I cradled her face in my hand in the moonlight.

"Never leave again?" She snuggled closer.

"Deal."

xXxXx

 **February 14th, 2016**

"What do you think?" Bella asked.

My piano sat in the center of the living room, gleaming darkly, casting shadows and crowding out the rest of the furniture like it had just been dropped from another universe.

"This is the change you made to the house? I can't believe you did this."

"Is that satisfied disbelief, or horrified disbelief?"

I wasn't certain. I glanced from Bella to the piano and back again.

"I had it tuned," Bella added. She took my hand and led me across the room, almost like she was making an introduction.

"I wouldn't expect any less." I kissed the top of her head. "Thank you."

The piano waited quietly as if it had been in on the surprise. I pulled out the bench and took a seat. Black lacquer glistened.

"How did you do this?" I asked. This was clearly some form of black magic.

Bella perched on the corner of the bench. She bit her lip. "Alice still has a key. You know how she was visiting her mom a couple weeks ago? It took some convincing."

"Alice," I grumbled, pulling Bella toward me. She slipped along the bench and snuggled into my side.

"Go easy on my agent," Bella rasped, doing her best Edward Cullen impression. "She has your best interest at heart."

xXxXx

 **October 21st, 1986**

The knock on the front door echoed through the barren apartment, followed by the hollow clack of heels against old marble.

"Edward? Are you here? Hello?" Alice's singsong voice bounced off bare plaster. "This can't be right. Edward?"

Footsteps began receding and I rushed from the kitchen before she could leave. I slid in front of her, blocking the door and holding out two mugs of coffee, the only offering the kitchen was capable of producing at the moment. It was also a necessity if I wanted Alice awake and coherent before ten. I pretended not to notice the dark circles under her eyes or the bewildered look on her face. She'd seen all that and so much more from me over the years.

"Thanks for getting here early," I said with a peck on the cheek, handing off a mug. They were from the gift shop at the Whitney down the street. Piano, mattress, coffee maker, mugs; I had all the essentials. I was ridiculously pleased with myself.

"What is this?" Alice asked, taking a grateful sip and turning in place, gazing up at the tall ceilings, peeking through doorways, and then out the window onto the park.

I leaned against the wall and took a swig of coffee. "Well, this is the foyer, Alice."

Alice rolled her eyes before her gaze settled on the grand piano positioned just underneath the chandelier. She walked over and ran her fingers across the keys.

"I needed a place to put my new piano?" I suggested with a laugh. I slid onto the bench and pulled Alice down next to me.

She whistled. " _Your_ piano?" She pressed one of the keys and a deep C rang through the empty space, making the walls, the bench, and my chest vibrate.

I followed with a full on C major chord, and a lush sound burst from the instrument in front of me, filling the emptiness all around us. The acoustics were perfect. "I bought it."

"Yes, buying it would make it yours. What are you and this enormous piano doing _here_?" Alice mimicked my hand placement two octaves higher and the C major rang out sweet and pure.

I pulled a house key from my pocket and slid it across the music shelf. "The piano may be mine, but this is yours."

Alice plopped her mug down on the piano, exchanging it for the key. I swept her mug back into my hand. I didn't want rings on the second most expensive thing I'd ever purchased - the most expensive being the apartment I'd bought to house it. "You're being cryptic, Edward."

"Let me show you around." I nudged Alice along the bench until she was forced to stand, then pushed her through the swinging doors. "This is the kitchen: double oven, gas range, lots of cabinet space, view over the park. Over here's the formal dining room. Mom's already looking for stuff big enough to fill it."

"Mom?"

"Hearing about this place made her year. Let's head back this way." I left the coffee mugs on the butcher block countertop in the kitchen. "On the other side of the foyer we have the library. I finally have shelves. You can send over all my books from the spare room. And check this out." I flicked a switch and blinds descended, blocking out the bright morning sun."

"Edward, slow down."

"And down here's my room." I had a mattress on the floor and an ashtray. At some point I'd upgrade, but in truth I needed nothing but a roof over my head and my new piano sitting in the foyer.

"And then there's a bathroom, and then this." I flung open the door to the empty bedroom at the end of the hall.

Alice glanced up at me, unimpressed. "And?"

"And this is yours if you ever need to get away."

She folded her arms across her chest. "From what?"

I took Alice's hands in mine. "Alice, we've known each other forever."

"Which is why none of this is making any sense. What are we doing here on the Upper East Side?"

"If I'm going to make this work I need a place to get away. Who the hell's going to come to the Upper East Side?"

"Whoever you ask. Are you trying to say there's no way to get coke past sixtieth? East of the park?"

"There's none here. There's not going to be. They only have your name and Emmett's downstairs. Not Caius, not Marcus, not -"

"Jasper?"

"So, if you need to get away..."

Alice pulled her hands from mine. "Fuck you, Edward." She stomped down the hall, slipping a little on the polished parque.

"Alice!" I grabbed her shoulder but she shook me off. "Alice!" The second time I held tight. The second time she let me turn her around.

"I'm not ready to give it all up. It means too much to me; too much to all of us. But if I can just get away from everything when I need to, I think maybe I can make this work. No bullshit, no sycophants. None of it. It's quiet. It's whatever I want it to be. And I want this for you too."

Alice snorted. "And you want it for _Emmett_?"

"No, it's his job to keep me safe. It's the point of having this place."

"Not Kate?"

I shook my head. "Nobody. No friends, no fans. No one. I could buy anything, and I chose this. White walls and a piano. Safety."

"Is this what they taught you when you were in there?" she asked. "This is supposed to make you better? Are you sure you got it right?"

Of course no one at the treatment center had suggested anything like this, but no one there knew me as well as I knew myself.

"I'll ride myself out here when I need to. It's why Emmett gets a key."

Alice gritted her teeth and ran a hand through her hair. "You think six miles, a piano, and a strongman are what you've needed all this time? Are you that stupid?"

"Go to hell, Alice."

"No, you go to hell. I don't need a room in your luxury asylum. This solves nothing, Edward, except for removing yourself from everyone else's problems. I'll be out in the real world dealing with the people I care about, like I've been doing with you since you were a scared kid. But some stranger comes along and gets a paycheck for it and it means they're better equipped to make all the difference in your life?"

"Emmett's not the only one with a key who's getting a paycheck."

"Fuck you, Edward," Alice spat.

I didn't stop her from leaving that time. Of course we'd make up, then we'd argue again. It would go on like that for years, until she stopped speaking to me altogether after I made the biggest mistake of my life.

Alice took the key, though. Almost true to my word, I've only given out two more copies since that morning: one to a cleaning service, and almost two years later I'd give one to a homeless NYU student. Kate never wanted to step foot in the place, let alone possess a key, and I can't say I'd blamed her. I kept the apartment through the years of my marriage anyway, and when I was in New York I'd visit. I'd remove the dust cloth, lift the fall, and rest my fingertips on the keys. Memories would flood back: from Bowie to Bella, and I was home.

xXxXx

 **February 14th, 2016**

Maybe Alice knew I never escaped to New York to play the piano like I used to with Kate. Maybe she knew Bella's house in San Francisco was my current refuge from the world. Maybe she hoped the piano would make it complete.

Bella smiled up at me from the bench by my side and I remembered the nights so long ago when she'd pad out of her bedroom to listen to me play. I remembered how she claimed a space on the bench beside me and seemed to hold her breath while listening to the melody she evoked. I remember how she would shyly press her thigh against mine while I showed her how to play the songs she'd inspired.

"I'm almost as nervous as the first time I sat on this bench with you," Bella admitted, almost like she could read my mind.

"Why in the world are you nervous?"

She shrugged. "I technically stole your piano for ten days."

"And brought it to my home."

"Are you going to play it?"

I lifted the fall, but couldn't bring myself to strike a key. My fingers rested limply, no better these days than inanimate objects. "Do you want me to play?"

"I want whatever it takes to get you back."

"Well, you got it, then. You just picked me up." The smile felt shallow on my face as my joke fell flat between us.

Bella took my hands in hers. She shook her head. I could see her searching for words. "Something's not right. It's more than David. Have you spoken to Dr. Anderson about it?"

Of course I'd spoken to my psychiatrist, but the uneasiness I was wrestling with had nothing to do with my diagnosis or medication. My physician had confirmed as much. At the same time, it was more than a friend's death, or a piano, or a grown-up daughter. Part of me felt I had no right to this newfound dissatisfaction. I shouldn't feel neglected when I was at the center of Bella's home and heart.

"What is it?" Bella asked.

I glanced around us at Bella's clean, carefully crafted existence. My piano was like a blight on the living room. It was well-intentioned, but all wrong.

"I told myself I had everything I needed."

"What else do you need?"

I didn't have an answer. Being in that room, sitting at the piano with Bella, it should have all fallen into place. What was wrong in my head and my heart should have been set right.

"I'll let you know as soon as I figure it out."

 **xXxXx**

 **Present Day - June 7th, 2018**

Jim's on the edge of his seat with mention of the mythical piano I used to write the last two Masen's albums and the rumored solo stuff that never saw the light of day. "All that punk stuff really did have its start on a piano, huh?" Jim asks.

"From the time I was a kid," I admitted.

"Wow, and you got started on this album with that same piano back in early 2016?"

"Not really. I didn't know if I wanted to perform, or even to write music again. It had been so many years. Bella knows me better than I know myself sometimes. The piano was the right idea, but it was in the wrong setting."

Jim nods along. "I can hear that in the lyrics to the first track. It's about writer's block?"

"I'd gone so long without saying anything of note, that not only couldn't I figure out what I'd like to say, but I didn't know how to do it. I'd found a way to live a happy life without expressing myself, but a life that was subtly unfulfilling. I don't think we can live a complete life without finding that spark inside us and then showing it to the world. That first track's about living. After five fucking decades, I was figuring out how to do it all over again."

xXxXx

 **A/N: Thanks so much for reading and for loving this fic family so many years after There is a Light. The next chapter is coming in the next few weeks. In the meantime, don't be shy. Leave a review and tell me what you think. xoxo ~BDC**


	3. Place to Be

**I don't own Twilight, or the pretty song by Nick Drake that's the title to this chapter. (Does this mean you should Google it and listen? I just write this, do what you will).**

 **Many thanks to my beta, SereneInNC, and my new-to-this-fic pre-reader, Robsmyyummy Cabanaboy. I needed some hand holding this time, and they were there for me. Mad love!**

 **xXxXx**

 **Chapter 3**

 **Present Day - June 7, 2018**

I take a break and take a sip of water, glancing across the green room at Jim. He's looking over his notes, but his eyes have glazed over and I'm quite sure he's not reading a word of what he's written. It's the look of a twenty-two year old trying to contemplate the infinity contained in five decades and whether or not he's truly living. He's wondering if it's going to take him as long as it's taken the old man in front of him to figure it out. I shake my head and chuckle to myself. Alice has been telling me to lighten up since I was sixteen, but it's clearly never going to happen. Not when I can send an adolescent reporter into an existential crisis within minutes of meeting.

"You have any other questions in there for me?" I ask, nodding to the cell phone balanced on Jim's knee.

The kid self consciously runs a hand through his hair and his cheeks grow blotchy. He shakes his head, almost like he's shaking off a thought. "Right." He picks up his phone and scrolls. "So, um, yeah." He looks up and I nod encouragingly. "You didn't start writing the album on your piano in February 2016, but I'm pretty sure I heard it was all recorded in your home studio?"

I nod my head, relieved Jim's recovered. He's too young to suffer my mid-life crisis. I sit back, stretching my arms out over the back of the couch. "Start to finish."

"But from what you said before, it doesn't seem like you, um, had a home studio?" Jim ventures.

"I didn't then, but I do now."

"You have pictures?" he asks, eager once more.

"Pictures?"

Jim shrugs. "I do some sound engineering on the side."

I smile. "Of course I have pictures." I pull my phone from my back pocket and begin scrolling, proud and pleased to share.

xXxXx

 **April 6th, 2016**

After Bella stole my piano back to me, it sat lonely and accusing in the living room. Thea coaxed a handful of lessons from my fingertips. I played old favorites for Bella when she asked: _metamorphosis_ by Glass or _Sonatas and Interludes_ by Cage. I couldn't bring myself to play anything I'd written, though, let alone try something new. There was dull gray emptiness in place of melodies whenever I sat at the bench. New words I tried to write were trite and insincere, an imitation of my former self.

It was different for me in the studio, though. Every once in a while Jasper managed to wrangle me in with a snippet from some up and coming kid or another he was working with. Jasper had an ear, I'll give him that. I was never disappointed when I sat down at the control panel. I might have been mute, but listening to whatever Jazz pulled me in for, I'd lose the melancholy and whole afternoons as I tried to find the perfect blend of treble and bass that would highlight what made those young musicians unique.

"You know, maybe this is what you need."

I startled to find Jasper leaning in the doorway, watching me at the mixing board.

"What?" I asked, turning down the volume enough so I could hear both music and Jasper at once.

"The ladies are all worried when this, right here, is all you need." Jasper smiled, like he'd solved something. Burden lifted, he threw himself onto a free couch.

I put aside the news Bella and Alice were concerned enough about my moods that Jasper had caught onto my shit. Instead I laughed, certain the hole in my life couldn't be filled by four kids from California farm country. I was enthralled with their unpredictable mix of alterna-pop and avante garde jazz, though. I went to turn up the volume and get back to work.

"I'm serious. Get your piano into a studio and you'd never leave."

I shook my head. I was no session musician. "How's this sound?" I asked, holding out headphones.

Jasper joined me at the control board and bobbed to the beat as I played the track for the millionth time over. It felt warmer and more jarring. I didn't want to fuck with it's brashness, but before my edits it had sounded flat and small. Song over, I pushed myself away from the board proudly, folding my arms across my chest. "What do you think?"

I personally thought it was phenomenal, but when Jasper turned my way I was worried I'd been way off base. He pulled off his headphones, tented his fingers in front of him and sighed. "Listen, Ed, I just gotta say this."

"That bad, huh?"

"Shit, Ed, it's better'n anything I coulda' done. But listen, Alice thinks you're for shit lately. She's worried, like call in the clowns and have you committed kinda worried. I get what she's saying, and it makes me think maybe there's something to it, since Alice has seen you in all kinds of ways."

"What the fuck? It's not like that, Jazz."

"It's not like what?"

I took a deep breath and tried to tamp down my building anger. This was my shit. It had nothing to do with Alice. That said, the situation had gotten fuzzy over the decades.

Jasper waited expectantly. I sighed and tried to gather my thoughts. "I don't think it's my brain."

My friend appeared unimpressed. "You don't know?"

"I'm useless, but my depression's under control."

"Well, I don't know much about your brand of depression, but I think feeling useless might factor into the picture. Anyway, you're not even useless; you're a melodramatic son of a bitch. Get the fuck in the studio again. Make some kid's life when they get to put your name in the liner notes. Useless? You'd never want for work."

xXxXx

Like magic, the peace I'd felt in the studio was shot to shit after our talk, so I said my goodbyes to Jasper and walked the sloping San Francisco streets, miles toward home. I wasn't surprised Bella and Alice were concerned about my moods. The bland feeling in my gut had stretched through the winter and was slipping into the springtime like an invertebrate lurking on a dark ocean floor. I wanted to want… something. I needed to say… something, but I was falling far short of my own expectations.

My psychiatrist had tried titrating one of my meds higher, my counselor was sure I was still dealing with the aftershocks of David's death, but this unsatisfying agitation was something new. Alice was off-base. _Send in the fucking clowns_... She'd seen me at my worst. She'd been there since the the beginning.

xXxXx

 **January 1973**

I woke in a bed underneath fluorescent lights. Days bled one into the other. Sometimes my mother was there, and sometimes she wasn't. She sat next to me, choking back sobs, holding my hand if I was too groggy to pull it away. She left with a whispered, "I love you." She didn't, though. Her greatest fear had come true. I was no better than my father. She would do everything in her power to change me. Then, she might love me again.

I got myself to the window when I cared enough to get out of bed. The sky matched the gray of the snow lining the sidewalks. Cars passed in a monotonous line, one after the next after the next. The sound of tires on wet pavement sounded like the sea. I closed my eyes and imagined cold waves and sand.

There were group sessions and school lessons. There were doctors and counselors. There were times I was supposed to make a craft. I sat and words other people said entered my brain and then left. I didn't hold onto them. I didn't answer when addressed. I went back to my room and I hoped to die.

"Edward?"

I flinched, not expecting to hear Alice's voice as I sat staring out at the traffic below. I wouldn't face her. I wouldn't speak. I couldn't control my mouth or my tongue and I didn't want her to know.

"Edward?" Her voice was soft, high-pitched, like she was addressing a small animal. She was nervous. I clenched my hands and my arm swung. I tried to hold my hands in my lap. "I asked my mom to let me come in here alone. She's in the hall."

I leaned my head against the corner and the wall felt cool against my forehead as I tried to hold onto Alice's words. My face twitched.

"I finally got your mom to answer the door. She's happy we're friends. She put my name on the list. Are you okay?"

 _My brain worked through quicksand and I saw red and blue flashing lights reflected in Alice's big, black eyes and in the tears running down her face. I felt all over again the restraints around my wrists as I'd struggled on the ground._

I flexed my hands in my lap. The restraints were gone. I was no longer a danger to anyone. I could hardly move. Hardly think.

"Your mom says maybe you'll be home soon?"

"Uh."

If Alice came to the hospital it meant she still wanted to know me after… what? There were holes in my memory. It's why they let me stop ECT. They said the holes would fill in when my brain recovered. They said this brand new drug would be better than being strapped to a table. No more electricity burning holes in my brain.

The new medicine turned me into nothing. I was a bag of gray marbles that couldn't speak or move the way I wanted to. But it was the last chance for them to change me into something my mother would love.

"A bunch of the guys have been asking about you."

"Don't -" I stopped talking after the first slurred word came out of my mouth. My voice was thick, rough. It wasn't mine. Tears fell down my face.

"I won't. I promise," Alice almost whispered, and her voice was much closer.

I flinched.

"I miss you, you weirdo. You should have told me."

"No," I whispered. I shook my head against the wall. Tears dropped onto my lap.

"Your mom wouldn't say what it is."

My body shook with ugly sobs that sounded like this other misshapen version of me. I was no longer dangerous, but I was monstrous. I wouldn't say the words Alice was asking about. They were mom's greatest fear. I was mom's greatest fear. Left unspoken it might not be true.

"I know you were just trying to help."

 _Blue and red lights flashed in the dark rain. My face hurt. There was blood on my shirt. My clothes were soaked. Alice watched from the sidewalk. "I'm sorry," she'd mouthed when I was in the back of the police car. When I was trying to get out of the police car. When I was hitting my head against the glass_ _._

A small hand came to rest on my shoulder and I hunched more, pulling away from her contact. This was never why I'd wanted Alice to touch me.

"Is this where you were last time you were away?"

It was, but this time it was different. This time I had to be sedated. This time I had a new diagnosis. This time it was serious. This time they doomed me and they electrocuted me, and they drugged me, and it was all better than if they'd done nothing at all, because I was dangerous.

"Edward, you can talk to me. I'm not mad. I'm so sorry."

I shook my head and held my tongue.

"Will you let me know when you're back home?"

My hand jerked a little as I wiped the tears from my face.

"Edward?"

I shook my head. Up and down. I closed my eyes. I wanted to tell her she was my best friend. I wanted to tell her how she was the only one that visited besides my mom, but I didn't trust my mouth or my tongue or my voice.

Her hand tightened, grasping my shoulder. "Good."

The peck on the cheek was so light and quick I might have imagined it, but my brain didn't have the power to dream.

My medication was adjusted and readjusted. Eventually I could walk and talk like more of a normal person. Eventually the holes in my memory began to slowly fill in. Eventually I realized if I wanted to leave I would have to talk and participate, so I did, and one dim afternoon in the freezing rain I walked out of the hospital's entrance and followed my mom into a waiting cab.

"I love you," I said to her, as she sat on the other side of the back seat, her arm on the armrest.

"I'm glad, dear." Her smile was shallow, her eyes flitted over me like she was too scared to let them settle in any one location.

My father was home when we arrived: tall, pacing, red-faced. Carlisle Cullen's agitation usually swung to exuberance. This was a version I seldom saw.

"I won't tolerate this behavior!" he thundered as I sat on the edge of my carefully made bed. He paced the room like jumping beans were animating his limbs, loose and jittery. "Your mother told me how you've been ditching school and getting high, and then _this_. _This_!" he spat, too disgusted to say exactly what 'this' was.

I swallowed and gazed at my feet.

"Since when do you fight people?" he asked, stopping in front of me to lift my chin and peer at me. His eyes were wide and glistening, shivering in their sockets. "This ends now, Edward. It's back to business around here," he said very quietly, his fingers shaking where they held my face.

" _You're_ telling me this?" I asked quietly.

His fingers tightened, gripping hard enough to leave marks. "I'm your father and you're going to listen to me. You're going to listen to your mother."

"But this is all your fault."

It wasn't the first time my father slapped me, but it was close to the last. I might have looked like Carlisle, but in that moment I had the wherewithal to choose a different fate. I chose not to double my mother's disappointment. I chose not to tie anyone down to my insanity the way my father had. This drugged out, impotent version of myself the hospital made couldn't be the only alternative.

One by one I stopped taking the pills. Eventually I found the courage to track Alice down to a doorway on the Lower East Side. Her mother told me to ring the buzzer with a name. Button after button was empty, but halfway down a row written in loopy, old-fashioned handwriting, yellowed and torn, it said ' _Masen_ '. When Alice opened the door and saw me standing there with a backpack slung over my shoulder, she threw her arms around my neck.

"You're out," she said, looking me over from head to toe.

"Forever," I agreed.

xXxXx

 **April 8th, 2016**

"What are you working on, babe?" Bella asked as she walked into the kitchen for a coffee refill.

I glanced up from the laptop, pleasantly surprised. She was closing in on a deadline and I hadn't expected to see her surface for hours. "Truthfully?"

Bella smiled and pulled up a stool. She tugged out her ponytail and rubbed at her scalp. Hair tumbled over her shoulders. "No, lie to me. Tell me sweet, sweet lies."

I twirled my fingers through a chestnut lock. "Well, Jasper thinks I should buy a studio. Or rent one? Maybe he just wants me to help him out. He wasn't clear. He thinks maybe I should pretend to be a sound engineer."

Bella raised an eyebrow. "Seriously? Advice from Jasper?"

I tugged at the strand wrapped around my finger. "I've known Jasper longer than you've been alive."

Bella pulled away to get cream for her coffee. "You're a liar, Mr. Cullen. Exaggeration doesn't suit you."

"It's close. How old are you again?"

Bella rolled her eyes and shook her head, returning to the stool by my side. "Get over the age difference, babe. It works for me. I have a thing for older guys."

I bit my lip. "Lucky me."

"You're right about that," Bella agreed, leaning in for a kiss. And for a minute I was lost in the feel of her soft lips and the subtle citrus scent of her shampoo. I threaded my hands through her hair, holding her head, pulling her onto my lap.

"So," Bella rasped, her forehead against mine.

I raised my eyebrows. It looked like Saturday was coming early this week. I pulled her body flush with mine. "Yes?"

"Tell me more about this studio idea." Bella chuckled as she slid from my lap and pulled my laptop in her direction.

I laughed. "I don't know. I could build it exactly the way I'd want it. I'd never have to make due or work around something missing."

"You're really looking?" Bella asked, scrolling through the list of mixed-use buildings open on the screen.

"Can't hurt to look, right?"

There were other explanations I didn't say out loud. I'd fit myself into Bella's life, but there was no room for anything else in her space. I wasn't sure if I needed a studio, but the idea of a place where I could figure it all out was exciting. Glancing at Bella, though, I felt too guilty to try to explain it all. How was I supposed to tell her she wasn't enough? I knew how much those words could sting, even when everything else was falling into place.

xXxXx

 **December 31, 1973**

Siobhan was waiting for me in the ally behind the kitchen after I clocked out at ten. Most of her face was masked by a thick red scarf, but her bright blue eyes glittered when they met mine, and they crinkled at the corners, evidence of a hidden smile. There was no reason in the world I should have had the night off, but Siobhan knew about the Masen's, so I made some promises and she pulled some strings.

"Cigarette?" she asked, as she held out the crumpled pack.

"Sure, thanks."

I didn't care about tobacco, but I liked the brush of her warm fingertips against mine, and the way we had to huddle to keep her lighter lit and how we held our heads together until the tips of our cigarettes glowed red. It made it less awkward to hold her tight and thread my arm through hers. She shrieked as a rat skittered across our path and I laughed, holding her closer, all manly and protective. I leaned in for a kiss and she didn't swat me away.

"How old are you?" she asked.

"Old enough." I shrugged. I tried for another kiss, and then pulled her along towards my place. We stumbled over frozen snowdrifts and sodden trash, slipping on patches of ice. Siobhan glanced at me from time to time, almost like she didn't believe the kid working the washer had access to the coolest party on the Lower East Side.

"How do you know these guys?" she asked.

"I _am_ these guys."

" _You're_ the Masen's?" She looked me over from head to toe and laughed out loud.

I cocked a smile and shrugged, too cool for my own good. "I'm one of them."

To prove the point, I pulled Siobhan past the line of people shivering and smoking in the cold outside the apartment, pleased by the raised eyebrows and huffs of exasperation. Up front, Miles was holding the line.

"Hey, man," I greeted our part-time bouncer with a two-handed shake, then wrapped an arm around Siobhan's shoulders. "This is Siobhan, my manager."

"Ha! You've got a manager now?" Miles laughed.

Siobhan rolled her eyes. "I manage his dishwashing."

Miles kept laughing as he pressed the bell labeled 'Masen'. "Alright, big guy. Have fun."

"You weren't shitting me," Siobhan hissed as I led her up the urine-soaked stairway. "I can't believe you got us in!"

Drums shook the walls, voices swelled, a couple fucked against a wall. And finally on the fourth floor, I threw open the door to a sea of people and a cloud of smoke. Alice had the place strung with strands of big old Christmas lights, hanging from the brick walls and crisscrossing the pipes overhead. Jonathan was shouting into a mic on the little wooden stage against the wall with Moe on drums.

"Want a drink?" I asked, bringing my mouth to Siobhan's ear so she'd be able to hear me, and also so my lips could linger, then slip to the nape of her neck. She nodded and I let my lips brush again, my hand at the small of her back. "Meet me on the fire escape." I pointed toward a window, half-open for ventilation.

The parties at Alice's place started after the Broadway Central caved in. The heap of rubble between Broadway and Mercer left an opening on Tuesday night's punk rock calendar. At first Alice just invited a few people over. She used her mom's connections and her instincts to mix and match guitarists with vocalists, poets with pianists. Within a month, there was a cover charge and Alice was bringing in more than her rent. She hired Miles to man the door, and Jerry to watch the bar set up at the kitchen table. Bands sent their demos, street artists painted the walls, and people lined the sidewalk week after week hoping to get into the Masen's.

After coming and going all summer long, I'd pretty much taken up permanent residence on her couch. I didn't need to ring up at the Masen's anymore. I had my own key to the broken-down, shell of a building we called home.

xXxXx

I met Siobhan with two plastic cups filled to the brim with something Jerry concocted when I told him I was there with a girl. She took a sip and shuddered. "This is awful."

"But it'll keep us warm."

"I don't know, I'd rather freeze," Siobhan said as she tried to shake off the taste. She tried balancing the cup on the railing.

"I might be able to keep you warm," I suggested, my hands finding their way under the edge of her coat.

Siobhan pulled away enough to look me in the eye. "How do you know Alice?"

I shrugged. "Long story."

"You and her?"

I shook my head. "No. Never."

Of course, I'd been in love with Alice forever, but she never shimmied her hips like Siobhan did when I wrapped an arm around her waist. She never lingered when I touched her. Alice kept a close eye on me, but it was more to enforce house rules.

" _I don't want to wake up to naked strangers in my living room," she'd grumble after I walked said stranger to the door._

" _But I sleep in your living room."_

" _You sleep there. End of story."_

She'd pull me aside and remind me to be safe before I left for the night. Or if I was half out of my mind, she'd take away my drink and leave a bottle of water and an aspirin on an end table.

Sometimes I thought maybe she'd glance at me like Siobhan was looking at me out on the fire escape. I'd catch a sideways glimpse in the kitchen when I'd stumble in to get myself a morning cup of coffee, or when I stepped out of the shower with just a towel around my waist.

Without Alice, though, I would have been on my own. I owed her my freedom, so I stuck to the rules. I got a job and chipped in with rent. I kept the nudity to the bathroom behind closed doors. I stayed away from her friends and tried to take care of her too. Sometimes she'd find the aspirin on her nightstand. Sometimes she woke to fried eggs and toast. And then she'd ruffle my hair and thank me, leaving me frustrated with a peck on the cheek.

That night Alice was busy orchestrating the biggest party of the season, so I hadn't seen her since I'd come up. Instead I concentrated on Siobhan. Her hair was a mess of auburn curls that caught my fingers like fish in a net. We watched the show starstruck from the window. We traded kisses, laughing as we tried to get clothing out of the way enough to have fun, but not enough to lead to frostbite. Then I helped her over the ledge when I headed back to the bar for more drinks.

"There you are!" A small hand encircled my wrist and pulled me into the bedroom. Alice was beautiful and frantic, her eyes red around the edges. "Where were you?"

"Fire escape," I explained with a shrug. "There's a no nudity rule in the living room."

Alice didn't find me funny. She pulled at her hair and paced the room. Her big black eyes searched my face. "Lou's not coming, Edward. What the hell am I going to do? Jonathan just left."

"What does it matter? Everyone's having a good time."

"No, this was supposed to be special. This was supposed to put us on the map. This was going to be _something_." She collapsed onto her bed and held her head in her hands.

"I don't know if you've been out there, but this is definitely something. Did you hear them all shouting with Jonathan? And the way he jumped into the audience? Fuck, and Chris, man, he was wailing on guitar." I sat next to Alice and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. "You did it."

"You should do it."

"What?"

Alice looked up at me and we were so close, her nose nearly brushing mine. Her lips glittered with pink gloss and her eyelashes looked impossibly long. Her hair hung in her eyes and I brushed it out of the way so there was nothing between us.

"Would you do it?"

"What do you mean?"

"You're a sight for sore eyes, Ed, and I've heard you a million times. For me? For fun? Seriously, you'd be up there with Chris, Killer and Moe." Alice grabbed my hands. "Do it?"

"Um, maybe?"

"Yeah?" Alice hopped onto her knees besides me. She held my hands to her chest "Yeah?"

"Yeah?"

She threw her arms around my neck. "Thank you!" I held on tight.

xXxXx

We talked it over first. The band started without me. They rocked and got everyone going, and when the crowd was thrashing, Chris caught my eye and nodded and I took the stage and screamed into the mic. They weren't my words, of course. I screamed the words of others backed by the guys who were actually in those bands. I screamed with the pain of a kid with electrodes stuck to his head, the kid whose brain could never quite be the one to make his mother proud, the kid who was just like the father he hated. The audience swam in front of my face, but one pair of dark eyes stood out from the others. Alice leaned quietly against a wall and watched while the rest of the audience tore itself to pieces around me.

When it was over, I felt like I'd torn myself open too, and all the black inside wasn't just accepted, it was turned to crack. I was swarmed. Jerry poured whiskey straight down my throat and Alice held her arm around my shoulders and introduced me to everyone. I was the one to talk to. I was the one to proposition, to get high with in the bathroom. Chris and Moe said they'd play with me anytime. "Next Tuesday?" Alice asked, and we sealed the deal with a shot.

Close to morning the place cleared out and I realized I'd lost track of Siobhan in the commotion. My boots squelched on floors sticky with stale booze, and my couch was damp and sour-smelling when I tried to settle in for the night. I hadn't expected to be left alone, so I went searching and found Alice in her room pulling off her bangled earrings. She smiled when she caught my reflection in her bedroom mirror, her face tired, but flushed and happy.

"You know what tonight was, don't you?" she asked, turning to face me.

I made my way to her, very conscious we were all alone now, only feet from her bed. "New Year's?"

Alice rolled her eyes.

"No, then. What was tonight?"

She grabbed my hands. "History. It was history, Edward motherfucking Cullen."

I held on tight and peered into Alice's eyes. "It wouldn't have happened if it weren't for you."

Alice shrugged and smirked and pulled her hands from mine. "I'm not going to deny it. You were, well…" Alice's voice trailed off and she shook her head. "Do you want to do this, Edward? You should. _We_ should. You were kind of amazing."

I hooked my fingers through the belt loops on Alice's jeans and pulled her closer. "We should," I murmured.

Alice tried to pull away. "Edward, I -"

"I love you." I held on. I held my breath and the only sound in the room was my heart beating as loud as a bass drum.

"I love you too."

"Thank God." I bent my head towards hers, but Alice pushed me away.

"You don't love me like that, Edward."

"I know what I feel."

Alice bit her lip. "You're with someone new every other night."

"Because I'm not with you."

"Listen, I'm not gonna say this wouldn't be interesting." Alice looked me over from head to toe and shook her head. "But it wouldn't last. You'll fuck it up, or I might even fuck it up, and then this, what we have right now, will all go away forever. I want to keep you, okay? I want to be your friend. I want to help you get everything you want, and I want a hand in the magic I saw on stage tonight."

"We don't have to fuck up. Let me have a shot and let's do it right? Then we'd have everything," I begged.

Alice clasped my hand and for a moment my heart stuttered, alight with hope, various pills, and too much liquor. "You're worth more than that to me, Edward. So am I."

It didn't make any sense. "If I like you this much, if we love each other and it's still not enough to go for everything, then what's enough? What would it have to feel like to go for it?" I asked, heartbroken and bewildered.

Alice shook her head. "I don't know. I guess I haven't felt it yet either."

xXxXx

 **April 23rd, 2016**

Sometimes when sitting with pen and paper in hand I would simply doodle the word "Saturday". Saturdays sang with promise. Alice learned to stay away on Saturdays mere weeks after I'd moved to San Francisco. Eventually the rest of the world learned to give us the day as well. Each Saturday spent with Bella was a day we got back. It made up for one of the innumerable days lost long ago where we would have been simply boyfriend and girlfriend in love and happy.

On Friday afternoons Seth picked Thea up from school, Bella powered down her computer and showered off the work week. On Friday nights we might have dinner with friends, see a film or go to a show. On Friday nights we hardly made it past the entry once we got home. On Friday nights there was no shushing. We didn't go scrambling for bed clothes and we fell asleep with limbs entangled and Bella's hair splayed across my chest. Friday nights I drifted off to sleep to the beat of her heart and the pulse in her veins.

Saturday mornings we slept in underneath soft down, surrounded by pillows. Saturday mornings I simply had to roll over to feel her skin underneath my fingertips. I'd open my eyes and she was there: warm, soft, firm, her body against mine. Saturday mornings Bella gave herself to me, to us. We indulged. Saturday morning's light would eventually filter through the slats in the blinds exposing sleepy, satisfying movements: a breath caught in her throat, my lips at the juncture of her thighs. Some Saturdays, especially early on, we didn't bother with clothes. When we'd finally made our way to the kitchen, I'd sink to my knees behind her as she made coffee, until her legs grew weak, and then I'd lift her onto the countertop and delight in the way my name fell from her lips. We'd watch old movies under throw blankets in the living room, then use all the hot water in the shower, then fall back to bed under the covers. Saturday was for wine with dinner in front of the fireplace, Bella falling asleep in my arms.

This Saturday was different, though. This morning I was up with the sun and with Bella snuggled into my side. I scrolled through pictures one after the next, after the next, in a loop.

"What're you doing?" Bella mumbled through half-open eyes.

"We should get brunch," I suggested.

"Very funny," she whispered, draping her arm over my waist, trying to tug me back under the covers.

"Sausalito?" I suggested.

Bella snickered, and I raised my eyebrows begging for consideration.

"Wait. You're serious?"

xXxXx

 **August, 1989**

Leaving London I'd burned bridges and left behind decades of indebtedness and responsibility. I left behind the last desperate attempt to make The Masens work. I left behind a persona which had become a burden and I returned to the safety of a quiet apartment filled with books, albums, and kitchen utensils - each imported for my pleasure. Not to mention, I'd imported the girl I'd been obsessing over for years.

I was out of my head, but I took enough pills so I might think straight, and while I was thinking straight I knew I couldn't let her think she owed me anything. Proximity didn't mean I expected a casual fuck. I understood what it meant to be eighteen and star struck. I wanted more for her than my own damaged brain and body, than a split-second sexual escapade. I wanted to see her swept off her feet, then fall in love. I wanted to live it all vicariously through her - to see the affair I'd never had, the one my brain had kept from me. I wanted her to have everything she deserved, so I made sure she didn't fall through the cracks. As my inspiration, she deserved everything I'd been given, least of all food and a roof over her head.

So I shared her space and I was happy. I lived in a partial benzo'ed bliss so I could look her in the eye and we could converse. We spoke about literature and I was happier. I could match her book for book, quote for quote and we challenged one another, and my knowledge made her smile. She was pleased with me and I was inordinately content.

I learned her tastes and fed her real food and warmed at her appreciation. I watched her visceral reactions, and I was glad I had a hand in what touched her lips and filled her skinny frame. She was healthier. Her hair was thicker. Her cheeks were pink. The changes left me breathless. She was like a lit fire in the unused fireplace. I basked in the warmth of her health.

While Bella took college courses, I learned her: the lines of her face, bright light in her eyes when our thoughts connected, the way she fiddled with the hem of her shirt when she was insecure. When she was anxious I learned to put her at ease: with a warm cup of coffee, with the murmured words of other men. My own lyrics or direct praise were too much and I would lose her. So I quoted others; I let her judge whether their words mirrored my own feelings.

I hoped she never guessed my heart, because it would never last. _I_ would never last. The less she knew, the more this was just a half-real fantasy lived in a random Upper East Side apartment. The less she knew, the easier it would be for her to leave when the time came. The more her heart would remain intact.

At night she'd listen to me play like I hadn't played piano in years. In that blessed space I played like I did when I was a kid. After I met Alice I'd sit at the bench in my mom's cramped living room and the theatrical passion of Bowie and the raw angst of the Dolls mixed with modern composers like Stravinsky, driving my fingertips urgently across the keys. With Bella in the quiet and white of my apartment there was light and peace and warmth, and those were the notes, those were the words. With Bella it was all glowing and yellow, like sunshine in the rain. She would sit next to me and silently watch, and the feeling between us bled into the notes, hot and sweet, like music played for the first time, like love for the first time. It swelled into the air around us. Our own cocoon.

"I wish you would kiss me," she said one night. It was tender and honest, and it was so easy.

"Kiss me," I'd replied.

Her lips were soft and careful. I held her like I was afraid she might break, because the contact broke open my chest straight through the sternum. Flayed open alive, I wanted inside her, or her inside me. I wanted to drown in her, or for her to tear me apart. I could have kissed her forever. And we did.

We moved to trading literature quotes for kisses. I kissed whatever skin I could chastely find: her lips, the corner of her mouth, the arc of her collar bone. All the while her urgent fingers asked me for more. I kissed her at breakfast and tasted coffee and felt the crumble of buttery croissants on her lips. I kissed her when we'd laugh over articles in the New Yorker. I'd kiss away the embarrassment when I caught her red-faced, watching MTV. Later I'd tease her about it while I kissed her toes, or the flare of a hip peeking from a T-shirt, or her neck, her earlobes, her eyelids.

I kissed her when I heard her prose. I was staggered by the words she strung together: those she hid from me, those she proudly read. She was fierce. She was like no one I'd ever met before, and anyone I never needed to meet again.

We kissed like kids, our bodies pressed against one another, grappling and struggling, tension mounting. I tried to hold back in order to keep our adolescent fairytale intact. I tried to protect her heart. Pulling and pushing at one another, it ended in tugging off tops. And I trailed my fingertips over sensitive skin. She would sigh with eyes open and alight, holding my gaze and asking for more. I was going to hurt her. I was going to break her heart and she was the one I loved most of all. She was the only one I'd ever loved.

"Oh my god!" I heard Alice gasp.

Looking up, my manager and oldest friend was standing in the kitchen doorway while Bella lay on the table, topless beneath me. My mind raced. Why was Alice there? Where did she come from? My house key hung from her hand. Her face was twisted with disappointed disgust and she stomped from the room.

"Shit," I swore, putting guilty space between my body and Bella's.

"Who was that?" Bella asked.

"Fucking Alice," I muttered, fairytale shattered. Alice hadn't been back to the apartment since she'd returned from London. She hadn't been eager to listen to what I'd been working on, seeing as how I'd abandoned them all. She'd needed space after I snuck away on a flight to New York, after I announced to Aro I was leaving instead of telling the friends I'd spent the last decade with.

With the withering look on Alice's face, I suddenly felt seventeen again, lectured for a naked women I left on her couch. This was my home, not Alice's, though. I didn't merit her disapproval. She had no right to ruin our morning, key or no key.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" I demanded, slamming the door to the kitchen, pushing Alice towards the library. "We agreed to meet on Tuesday."

Alice narrowed her eyes and held her ground in the foyer. "This _is_ Tuesday, Edward."

"Shit," I swore, running a hand through my hair. I tried to tease apart the days in my mind, measuring time by Bella's comings and goings and her change of clothes. I mentally ticked through the different shirts I'd pulled over her head. The pretty little lace bras I'd unclasped.

"What the hell are you on that you don't know what day it is? You're flushed and you're sweating and you're fucking a groupie on your kitchen table," she finished in a hiss.

I felt my hand flex into a fist. "She's none of your business," I growled.

"It's my business when it's happening when we're supposed to be having a business meeting."

"Leave it alone, Alice. I lost track of time. I've been writing."

I'd kept my muse to myself for years, out of selfishness as much as guilt. Without saying a word to Alice, Bella had become as vital to me as air and water. She'd become the reason I lived from night to night, writing, cooking, laughing, touching. My existence had become wrapped around hers. The gap between Bella's significance in my life and Alice's implications seemed insurmountable, especially as we squared off against one another in the entryway. I didn't know where to begin.

When I'd coaxed Alice back to listen to what I'd been writing, I'd made mental plans. First I'd tell Bella about Alice and our history, then I'd make Belgian waffles, Alice's favorite breakfast. Bella and I would greet Alice together in a much more civil manner.

" _Alice, this is Bella. She's the most precious person in my life."_ Something like that. Clearly I hadn't thought it entirely through.

Alice sighed and shook her head pityingly. "Fine. You want a minute to help the kid get herself together and get into a cab?"

"What?" I asked, glancing at the kitchen door, wondering if Bella could hear us, wondering if she'd heard Alice's insults. "No."

"I can tell you right now, if we're going to have a serious meeting, she's going to have to go. You keep staring at the door instead of looking at me. I want you in the room if I'm talking to you. You should tell her to go home."

I took a breath, closed my eyes, and finally came clean. "She is home, Alice."

I waited for a quick retort. I waited to verbally spar. I waited for feet stomping towards the front door. I opened my eyes and Alice stood in front of me, staring sadly toward the kitchen.

"It's not what you think it is," I tried to explain. It was guarded perfection. It was careful bliss.

"What exactly do I think it is, Edward? She's what? Sixteen?"

"Jesus, Alice."

Alice rolled her eyes. "Men. Fucking fine. Let's hear what you've got for me. I don't know why you didn't call Aro. He's got more of a stomach for this kind of shit than I do."

I took a moment. This wasn't what I wanted from my reunion with Alice. Our friendship went too deep, for too long. I wanted to be glad to see her. I wanted her to be glad for me. I walked toward the library and held open the door. I took a breath. I worked to keep my voice steady and calm. "Would you sit?"

Alice cocked an eyebrow.

"Please?"

Alice gritted her teeth, but she slung her bag over her shoulder and slipped past me. She shook her head disapprovingly as she perched on the edge of the couch. "Shoot."

I took a seat across from her, my head in my hands. I worked to order my thoughts and find the right words. "I shouldn't have left you all like I did. You were trying to help." I sat up and looked Alice in the eye. "I'm sorry."

Alice slid back on the couch and folded her arms across her chest.

"I might be insane, but I'm an adult and I owed you all much more than that."

"Why didn't you talk to me?"

"I just wanted to come home. I needed to be here. I didn't want you to talk me out of it."

"You wouldn't have been over there long, Ed. Just a few weeks and you would have had another album under your belt. Now? What the fuck are you going to do even if this shit you're writing's golden? Why would you do this?"

I glanced at the door to the library. "Alice, you helped my wildest dreams come true. Who would have thought when we were kids -"

Alice huffed and narrowed her eyes.

"Okay, okay, _you_ would have thought and you made it happen. And we fucking traveled the world. We made a name for ourselves. We sold out stadiums. But here's the thing, it doesn't hold a candle to what I feel when I'm with her. Her name's Bella Swan and it's a long story, but she's worth it. There's no question. When I'm with her I know it's enough to go for everything, just like you said it would be."

xXxXx

 **April 23, 2016**

I caught Bella sneaking curious glances at me as we drove through the hills of Marin County after brunch, headed decidedly away from the city. Richardson Bay glittered blue through gaps in lush green foliage, and as we climbed higher, the arches of the Golden Gate bridge lifted from the horizon. I felt slightly ill.

"I didn't know you were looking outside the city," Bella ventured.

I chuckled nervously and took her hand in mine. "Neither did I."

"I figured maybe you'd find something in Mission Bay." Evergreens towered overhead and the street grew more narrow. "Is this a secret studio?"

"Keep an open mind?"

"I want whatever's going to make you happy. This is just a little further from home than I'd imagined."

"Me too," I admitted honestly. It had taken two separate realtors and countless, fruitless hours of online searching to get me over San Francisco city limits. We turned onto the road and it wound higher, gates and hedges on either side.

"Does it have a view?" Bella asked dubiously. "Were you seriously looking for a studio with a view?"

"As a matter of fact…"

The wrought iron gates were already open as we turned off the road and rolled slowly down the flagstone drive. "Open mind, okay?" I asked, drawing her hand to my lips and kissing her knuckles.

Bella remained silent and still as the car came to a stop in front of large white home nestled into the hillside overlooking the bay. A manicured lawn rolled down and around to the converted carriage house, and beyond you could see a hint of turquoise water and the crowded hills of San Francisco.

"Come on," I coaxed. "The realtor's inside."

The ceilings were high and there was space enough to breathe, to live. The kitchen was large and open with a breakfast nook surrounded on three sides by windows looking out over the water. The formal dining room jutted out as if it were built on its own cliff, a peaked glass roof overhead, sky and sea for decor. There was a study with inlaid bookshelves rising two stories above a stone fireplace.

"This is for you," I said, leading her downstairs to the wine cellar. "We'd need more wine. A good problem to have?"

"But, Edward -"

"Not yet."

On the second level were bedrooms, each with a view of the water, enough for each of the girls and an extra for guests. The third floor was high above the treeline and the bay glittered golden in slanting sunshine, boats bobbing on the waves. I opened French doors to the balcony and we gazed out at the city Bella and her family called home. She quietly explored the dressing room and ensuite, and when she joined me I led her to the door at the other end of the room. "This one's for you too," I explained revealing an office overlooking the sea.

"This isn't a studio, Edward."

"No. That's out back."

Through the side doors and across the patio, past the kidney-shaped pool and the carriage house was a long, low building clinging to the cliff. One portion was open to the elements, light streaming through glass, illuminating the small kitchen and sitting area. The back was enclosed and laid out like game rooms and guest quarters. It's where I'd build the studio. It would need renovations, but I'd been prepared for those. I knew I wanted to make something all my own.

"This isn't what you said you were looking for."

"There are probably a thousand studio spaces in the city, but with each one I couldn't imagine getting into a car, or onto a trolley, and taking myself away from you and Thea. Those buildings would have stayed vacant if I were ever handed the key."

"But what about Seth?"

"He lives seventeen miles away. You better believe I Googled the mileage."

Bella sighed. I knew I was pushing her to the limits of how far she might live from Thea's dad. "We can't afford -"

"Yes, I can. You probably could too. We could buy this together, but I'll do it on my own if it makes you feel better."

"How did you go from a studio to -" Bella paused mid-sentence, looking out the window at the turquoise water.

"I didn't know what I wanted until I saw this, and then I knew it. I was certain. I want this more than anything I've wanted since I since I moved here to live with you and Thea. I want a home for my entire family, Lizzy included. I want room for you to work in quiet tranquility. I want a space for my piano and some equipment, so maybe, some day, I'll find something to say again. I want a yard so Thea can run around with her friends."

"So you're saying you want a new life?"

"No, I had the right idea when I went looking for a studio. I need more in my life than what I have right now. I need something that's mine, but I was so off base when I went looking for something that didn't involve you. Nothing I do will be perfect unless I do it with you. If this home doesn't work, we can find someplace else, but I think it's time we found something that's not mine or yours, but ours."

Bella glanced around at the tall ceilings and innumerable windows, all framing leafy greenery and the bright blue of the bay. "You always did have a soft spot for over-the-top architecture."

I couldn't help but smile. "But you loved me anyway. Try to deny it."

"When you brought me to your place for the first time I was afraid to touch anything. It felt like I was walking through a museum. This isn't so different."

"You made it your home."

"Because I was there with you."

"Let's find a home, Bella, with an office and a studio."

"Something really big with white walls. That's clearly your M.O."

"With warm touches and little nooks where we'd put a comfy chair so you can get lost in a book."

"There was one of those in the den."

"I know."

Bella took my hands in hers and bit her lip. "You really want this?"

"I want it for us."

"Okay, then."

"Yes?"

Bella nodded. "Yes."

xXxXx

 **A/N: I had so much help with this chapter. I took virtual tours through San Fran neighborhoods & was eventually convinced to move this family to the 'burbs (gasp!). Thank you Glenda Goodwitch Oz & Dolly Reader for being the most patient virtual realtors a girl could want. From early 70's bipolar treatments, to the walls caving in on the Broadway Central, much is rooted in real life and was illuminated by those I know in said real life. Thank You!**

 **I always love to hear what you think. Your reviews keep me going. Until next time... xoxo ~BDC**


	4. I Can Only Give You Everything

**I still didn't write Twilight. I also didn't write the lyrics to** _ **You Are the Everything**_ **that show up at the end of this chapter. That one's by REM.** _ **I Can Only Give You Everything**_ **, on the other hand, is by MC5. My fabulous beta is SerenInNC, and my pre-reader is Robsmyyummy Cabanaboy. They rock my socks harder than REM, MC5, or The Masens.**

xXxXx

 **Chapter 4 - I Can Only Give You Everything**

 **June 7, 2018 - Present Day**

"This is seriously dope," Jim enthuses, handing back my phone after he's scrolled through picture after picture of soundboards, studio monitors, and rack mounts with a broad smile plastered across his face.

I nod proudly in agreement, then glance at my messages, relieved to read Alice and Jasper are finally somewhere in the building.

"Was that an SSL 4000G?" he asks.

"An SSL 9000J, actually."

Jim's eyes light up. "Even better. Superanalogue."

"You know your stuff, kid." I take a swig of water and it's flat and wet on my tongue. I'd prefer a Scotch just before a show. I consider asking Emmett to find me a flask so I've got something small enough to hide from Jazz. It'll be helpful once we actually hit the road with this insanity.

A wave of anxiety hits at the passing thought of taking a crazy person and an old addict on the road with a new band. I know it won't be long, not like when we were kids and spent months in a beat-up old van. A few dates, a few major venues, it should be over and done with by mid-summer. Still, it will take me away from my family and so many of my friends, away from the home I worked so hard to establish. It will take me away from the place where I found absolute happiness much too late in life.

xXxXx

 **June 29th, 2016**

I knocked on the office door and waited for an answer, bouncing on my heels. Seconds passed like decades and I knocked again and waited again and reminded myself to breathe. I heard the faint tapping of fingers on a keyboard, and without an answer cracked the door. Sunlight streamed through wide windows, filtering through foliage, falling onto Bella's skin. She sat at her desk with her eyebrows drawn in a straight line, earbuds in her ears, lost in the world she was creating on the screen in front of her.

"Hey?" I waved. Bella typed. The house in order, her office together, Thea off at her summer ballet program, Bella lived between the bedroom and the office. She had the space she never knew she needed to create. It had given me the time to work miracles in the old pool house. Hours upon hours were spent with contractors, electricians, and engineers, and at last the last wire was in place, the last fuses were sparked.

And finally I could walk across a shaded yard, up a set of stairs, and find Bella. We were home.

"It's fucking done." I whispered, my lips skimming her skin.

"Hmm?" she asked, tipping her head, her hair falling over my hands, exposing her ear. Perfect for my lips.

"It's done." I slid my hands from her shoulders, lower to the tops of her tits.

"The studio?" She asked, pulling out earbuds. Tinny music moaned back.

"What's that?" I asked with a cringe.

Bella's cheeks went pink. "The Smiths," she admitted. She had the audacity to shrug and smile.

I chuckled. I playfully bit at her earlobe. "Traitor."

"No comparison, babe."

"You fucking know it. What the hell are you writing that you're listening to this shit?"

Bella pulled away, twisted in her seat, looking me over from head to toe. And instead of the faraway, unfocused, glazed-over gaze she had when writing, she saw me. In her office. In our home. "The Smiths are fabulous and you know it."

"You're walking the line," I blithely grumbled. I bit my lip.

"Whatever, Johnny Cash."

So, I charged at her and she shrieked as I flung her over my shoulder. We were only a room away from the bedroom.

xXxXx

 **November 21st, 1997**

I took a breath and tried to settle my nerves enough to gather my thoughts, but couldn't manage to winnow them down to a single sentence. I couldn't find the right place to start my session. My entire life had boiled down to this moment in time, from my childhood, to my mental health, to my best friend, and my biggest love.

My nerves jumped, and I looked past my therapist to the dove-gray walls of the office. They were usually appropriately soothing, but today they may well have been striped in rainbow neon. I took another deep breath like Camille had been trying to teach me. Violet orchids bent gracefully under the weight of enormous blossoms on the low table at my knees. Camille sat across the table from me, a kind smile softening the sharp features of her face. I knew it was irrational, but I tended to interpret her warmth as acceptance; proof I was on the right mental track. I decided then and there I would have to bring it up with her at some point. I was in therapy at least in part so I could learn how to be true to myself and end my unhelpful habit of self-delusion.

I sighed.

"You seem unusually contemplative today," Camille remarked, interlacing her fingers and resting her hands on her knee. She was always comfortable letting me sit and stew in my thoughts, so I was surprised at her prompt and checked my watch. I'd almost run out the hour stuck in my head.

"I've been speaking to Alice," I began. She smiled and I basked, somewhat irrationally, in my therapist's approval.

"One of the friends with whom you'd lost touch?"

"Yes, she was my best friend, of a sort. And a stand-in foster mom, and a childhood crush, and my manager, once."

"Right, _Alice_. Yes."

I took a breath. "I, uh, called and apologized like you and I discussed a few weeks ago."

Camille's smile broadened and I caught a flash of gleaming white. It _definitely_ seemed the smile of approval. "It's wonderful you found the wherewithal to make the call. How did she take it?"

I leaned forward in my seat and words burst from my mouth in a rush. "Well, Alice is blunt. She may live on the West Coast, but she's all New York. She told me it's been a long time coming, with some swearing I'll spare you, and some sarcasm that I couldn't replicate if I tried, but I think it could eventually be okay between us. I think so. It felt… good. We just kind of picked up after all these years. And then she told me in no uncertain terms there was someone who deserved the apology much more than she did."

I glanced at Camille. She waited patiently. "I don't disagree," I added, because I didn't. It was the next, logical step - aside from Jasper. In Jasper's case, though, I wasn't the only person who needed to make amends.

Camille nodded, either encouraging me to continue or stealthily agreeing with Alice's assessment.

"She'll be in New York next month for a book signing. With Bella," I blurted.

Once spoken, it added a new sense of reality to the words and left me feeling slightly lightheaded, like a wilting Victorian heroine. I shook my head and ran a hand through my hair, then took my millionth deep, cleansing breath.

"Are you implying Alice suggested you apologize to Bella in person?" my therapist ventured.

I shook my head. "Alice has called me twice in the last seven years. Once to ask me to stop sending Bella mail. Another time to _tell_ me to stop sending Bella mail. I don't know if she's encouraging contact."

Camille's eyebrows rose, twin arches over pale blue eyes. "I don't think you've ever mentioned this… mail?"

I felt my face go warm. If the packages hadn't come up in therapy by now, I was intentionally keeping it from these sessions. I offered a halfhearted, rueful smile, but Camille appeared nonplussed.

"Yeah, I don't know. Back when Bella and I were together and she was feeling anxious, she'd relax if I could find just the right quote from a poem, or the perfect song lyric. Then you know what happened when I spoke to her a few years back."

Camille probably had volumes of notes about the 1994 encounter at Bella's first book signing. Bella had written about a love I recognized like the inside of my soul, and it gave me the courage to seek her out. I'd needed to respond to the question left unanswered in her novel. Yes, I loved her as much as her heroine loved the aging punk rocker on the pages. I loved her in the absolute, and the feeling grew steadily over the years.

However, I hadn't faced what I'd done; I'd had that luxury because I left. And then I saw firsthand how much I'd hurt her. The pain cut as deep as it did because of how much she'd loved me. I couldn't let her think she was the only one of us who'd suffered through true love lost.

"When I realized she'd lived all this time carrying around the idea I didn't care enough," I explained to Camille, "I wanted to let her know she was everything to me. I sent her things so she'd know I gave her all I could, unfortunately just not what she wanted the most."

Camille waited, her eyes wide and warm, her fingers interlocked and resting on her knee.

"She deserved a loving, caring, supportive relationship," I explained. "She deserved a man who would always be there for her. She deserved happiness."

Water babbled in a little trickling fountain decorated with a twisting bonsai. Light filtered through the broad, green leaves outside the windows, falling in patterns over Camille's legs.

My therapist's eyes were kind, her gaze unwavering. "I haven't heard what you couldn't have provided."

I shook my head. "We've talked about my parents. I know very well the type of family I could make. Bella deserved better than what I could offer."

"Could you explain for me why you weren't able to offer Bella a relationship different from your parents'?"

I stared at Camille incredulously. She knew about my childhood, about my father. She knew what I'd lived through. Why was she asking me to explain this again?

When seconds stretched to minutes, Camille recrossed her legs and leaned forward. "While it's common for people who have suffered abuse in childhood to perpetuate the cycle, it was never predetermined that your relationship with this woman was doomed."

"It had nothing to do with my history of abuse or my intentions. You know why I'm here. You know about my brain, probably better than I do."

"Edward, are you telling me you don't believe a person with a bipolar diagnosis can maintain a long-term, loving relationship?"

"And like I've told you, I've seen the long-term, loving relationships they can have. My mother suffered for it. I ran away from home because of it."

Camille's smile must have been made of steel. It was still there, but her lips were pressed into a thin line. "What if you choose to make different decisions than your father did? What if your partner handled your relationship differently than your mother had? Are there no alternatives?"

I stared blankly.

"Tell me why you can't have this, Edward." Her voice was soft, but insistent.

"Even now, th-though," I stammered. "Even medicated," I pled. "It's not what anyone would want." My eyes felt damp. My throat felt scratchy. My hands curled into useless fists.

"It's not what _anyone_ would want, or it's not what _you_ would want?" Camille challenged, her voice still soft, sweet, yet also firm.

Anger flared swift and hot and I sat up straight in my chair. "That's absurd! I wanted it more than just about anything I've ever cared for. But what I wanted and what… God, I wanted it so much, it's just not -" I couldn't figure out how to finish my own thoughts, my brain tripping over a speed bump, or a hitting a wall it couldn't figure out how to surmount.

"A long-term, loving relationship as a man with this diagnosis may not be the type of relationship you idealized as a child. You would have to be open and honest about your mental state. Your partner would have to know about you and accept you, but it can be done. It _has_ been done. If it weren't for patient privacy laws I could offer you a long list of names."

I scoffed, a deep, grunting sound, eyes burning inexplicably. I found myself wiping at tears.

"Did you ever tell this woman about your diagnosis?" Camille asked.

I shook my head. "She deserved the kind of relationship where they live happily ever after."

"Edward, no one has this idealized version of a relationship you're pining for. Whether it's mental illness, poverty, infertility, incarceration, you name it, there are imperfections in all of our lives. But when two people love one another, they face those imperfections together, and it's better. Humans find comfort in companionship and the knowledge we're not alone in all of this. If we all waited for perfection, most of us would live life alone."

I wiped at my eyes. "It's not the life I wanted for her."

"Did you ask her if she agreed? Did she have the opportunity to make a decision for herself?"

Empty pain bloomed below my sternum, bleeding like sepia, cold and spastic. I tried to breathe, but it felt as if I'd had the wind knocked out of me. "No," I rasped. I'd made the decisions because I'd been protecting her.

"Did your mental health interfere with your relationship, Edward? Is your mental health keeping you from another long-term, loving relationship in the future? Or is it something else?"

It was a decision I'd made when I was sixteen as I stared my father down in my bedroom.

The sound that forced its way up from my empty chest and into Camille's tranquil office tore through the air like a sharp knife through a soft belly. And it tore again, and again, until the space was shredded and I was bent double, eviscerated.

"Edward?"

Camille was at my side, holding my hand, and after a few ragged breaths I was aware I was still in my seat with hot tears running down my face.

"I'm the one who did it," I mumbled through sickening sobs, retching and gasping. "She told me and I didn't believe her."

xXxXx

 **December 15th, 1997**

 **Every book I write is about you. From a masochist to a monomaniac.**

 **~Bella**

My hand shook as I read the inscription, but I couldn't help but laugh. Bella smiled up at me, cocky and pleased with herself. Fucking breathtaking.

"Would you see me later?" I asked, the desperation plain in my voice. It was all I could do to hold in the apology for another hour.

"I don't want an audience like last time," she cautioned, and one: I had no intention of repeating our last encounter. Two: Her answer translated to a yes. She would see me.

Hours flew, the sun slipped beneath the horizon. I couldn't eat. I sweated through my shirt and had to shower. Alice laughed at me over the phone.

"Just don't be an asshole like last time," she threatened.

The warning was disappointing, but she had no reason to think I'd changed.

"Jesus, Alice. I'm trying to do the right thing here."

"You always tried, you weirdo, but you have a history of landing way off the mark with Bella. She's in a good place, okay? I don't want to see her messed up again."

"Then what would you suggest?"

"I'd say be yourself and act normal, but, well -"

"Fuck you, Alice," I growled. She laughed, though, and it was good.

"So, um, a wine bar?" Alice asked suspiciously.

"Well, you said -"

"You listened?"

"Took me much too long."

"I like this version of you," Alice offered.

I was beginning to like him too.

xXxXx

An hour later I sat under a warmer in the courtyard of a nondescript wine bar on South 1st. Ivy clung to brick walls, still vivid green despite the chill, and barren vines and tiny, twinkling lights twisted through trellises overhead. A couple murmured in a corner, clutching hands, trading kisses, oblivious to the rest of the world around them. We certainly wouldn't have an audience, but my mind ticked through fears nonetheless. Perhaps she wouldn't come, or she would judge the choice too intimate, or she might feel too exposed outside. Or maybe she'd sit down before me and the years would stretch to separate us, until we were simply two strangers sharing a space.

She'd looked so beautiful at the book signing, having grown into her eyes and into her celebrity. I read the first novel from front to back in one sitting. With that first story I read our relationship between the lines and recognized the tragedy of our love. With time I saw I'd been as irrational as Romeo, not so much star-crossed as a stupid fool. With Bella's second novel I read her love of family, a family she never had as a child, a family she wouldn't have with me. And now, I needed to tell her how sorry I was, because it could have been us. It should have been us, and it was no one's fault but my own.

Just as I was beginning to worry my first fear might be coming true, Bella rushed into the courtyard breathless and pink-cheeked. She didn't hesitate when our eyes met. She wasn't shy, she didn't appear angry. There was a warmth to her smile like she was genuinely pleased to see me as she tried to catch her breath. The feeling was mutual.

I stood as she approached and she stopped with too much space for a handshake, too much space for a hug.

"Thanks for coming, Bella," I offered with a quaking voice, afraid to move almost as if it might make her change her mind and leave.

She didn't hold out a hand, but clutched the back of a chair as she glanced around the courtyard.

"I heard you enjoy a good bottle of wine?"

Bella arched her eyebrows. "Alice?"

"Not necessarily," I demurred. But as much as I wanted to keep Alice out of trouble, I couldn't lie to Bella. "Go easy on your agent, Ms. Swan. She has your best interests at heart."

Bella sighed, a sound like air escaping through a pinhole in a balloon, then sunk into the chair in front of her. I took my cue and took a seat.

"Bella -"

"Edward -"

We addressed one another in unison.

Bella blushed and ducked her head and her hair fell over her face, something I hadn't seen for such a long time. In a blink she was the young woman who couldn't quite look me in the eyes in the back seat of a limousine. My heart hammered against my chest.

"You first," I offered, because my carefully planned speech was shot to shit with a simple slant of her head.

Bella's chest rose and fell. A little diamond twinkled on a pendant between the deep neckline of her dress. I forced my eyes upward. I didn't ask her here to ogle her chest. When she finally looked up, she smiled and took a deep breath. "Thank you for the Whitman. It was too much."

"I was never able to open it afterwards. What's a book if it's not read?"

Bella smiled weakly and shook her head. The couple in the corner were full on making out. A boisterous crowd walked along the other side of the courtyard wall, taunting one another with obscenities. The moment I'd worked to create was threatening to pass.

I placed my hand over hers on the tabletop and it felt the same as it did so many years ago; comfortable and exciting all at once. I looked her in the eye. "Bella, I'm sorry."

Our server chose that moment to present us with a wine list and for a second Bella looked bewildered. She pulled her hand from mine and ordered in a rush. I said something, enough that the server retreated.

Bella kept her hands in her lap afterwards, out of my reach. "A bigger person might forgive you," she huffed.

"I had a responsibility," I agreed.

"As a guardian or as a boyfriend?"

"As the man who loved you more than -"

"Stop! Please." The other couple was startled out of their embrace and turned their heads in our direction. Our server dropped our wine glasses on the table and scurried away.

"As a human being, at the very least," I offered quietly, somewhat resigned.

"I came to tell you-"

"To stay away?"

Bella narrowed her eyes and fiddled with the stem of her wine glass. She shook her head before looking me in the eye. "I don't regret it, Edward. _Us_. I couldn't let you think that after everything I said last time. It's not fair."

I sighed, and for the first time that evening I felt the edge of hope.

"I had a feeling you'd keep the Whitman," I admitted.

"Why?"

 _Leaves of Grass_ was something we both shared and something we both loved. "You loved it," I said, instead.

I could see by the look in her eye she understood the substituted phrase.

From there conversation flowed freely. She laughed and told me about her life. She even made me feel better about all of the nothing I'd been doing to keep myself occupied in New York. Things went slightly sour when Jasper's name came up, but I was certain we could skirt the issue. Afterall, she'd finally let me apologize and she didn't regret our relationship. It wasn't a heart-felt declaration, but it was a solid start.

"You could write or, I don't know, send him anonymous slips of paper," Bella said off-handedly, taking me by surprise. I felt my face drop. Me and my fucking mail.

"Edward, the mail…"

"You said I never gave you anything. Anything except the money," I tried to explain in a rush. I tried to recall the speech I'd been planning. This wasn't how it was supposed to happen.

"And an address."

"Yes, right. Of course. But don't you see you own me, Bella Swan? Completely." I glanced at her hand, itching to hold it once more. Then I glanced at her face. She was wide-eyed and sincere, and she was… sad?

"Edward, our relationship was the most significant of my life."

They were words I never dreamed I'd hear. It was my in. Now was the time to tell her it was my fault it all fell apart. She'd been right. I had regrets; I regretted my own stupid ideas about what we could have been.

"Mine too, Bella, and it's why-"

"But Edward, I'm engaged."

I'd meant more to her than anything, and she was... _what_?

"I'm engaged."

"Engaged?" I asked. My mind couldn't quite associate the word with a meaning.

"Engaged to be married," Bella repeated slowly.

"Engaged to be fucking married," I muttered. "Are you happy?"

"Of course. It's why we're engaged."

xXxXx

 **August 1st, 1998**

I left Bella alone, just like she'd asked. I'd always wanted everything for her, and I'd made it clear from the first time we met I couldn't be the one to give it to her. I'd figured out the truth too late.

I told myself it was better she was engaged to another man. I could only assume this 'Tyler' she'd marry was the picture of mental health. She'd said she was happy. She'd said she was in love.

Camille counseled me to move forward with the knowledge I could have a family some day. I could fall in love, talk honestly with my partner about my diagnosis, and let them make the decision about whether they wanted in. It all seemed so simple.

Of course, I didn't truly believe I'd ever feel the same about another person as I'd felt for Bella Swan. I told myself it was normal. All relationships were different. But in the long, dark hours I passed alone in my bed, I wondered if I was capable of loving anyone else. Bella just walked into a wine bar and took my breath away. How many hundreds had I seen since then without coming close to the same reaction?

I tried leaving New York and headed back to London, and eventually I fell back in with Kate. It allowed me to move forward and backward at the same time. I got to move on without moving past Bella. Kate had always been on Bella's periphery; pulled into Bella's orbit against her will. Up until that point, I'd never really given her a chance.

I kept most of Camille's plan intact: I was open and honest with Kate and she made it clear she wanted to be with me. I wasn't in love with her, though. Sure, I loved her. I'd known her for almost twenty years and she'd helped me through some of the lowest points of my life. She was easy to spend time with and she made me feel close to normal again. I was a boyfriend. Instead of offering excuses about why I couldn't be there for her, I did it. I did it well.

Then one night in August after she'd just returned from a six week trip to Australia, Kate called me and asked to meet at our favorite pub. She chose a booth near the back and sipped cranberry juice and soda water with a silly grin on her face. She pulled at stray strands of hair, giving away her nerves.

I waited. I knew Kate well enough to know given the opportunity, she'd say what was on her mind without prompting.

"I'm pregnant."

Her voice was bright. Her smile came easy. It was one of the last things I'd expected her to ever say.

"You look happy," I observed. I'd never pictured Kate as a mother, but I was glad she was pleased at the prospect.

Her hand reached for mine. "Edward, I'm pregnant," she repeated.

Her eyes were insistent, imploring me to understand. _Shit._ She thought… Did she really think?

"Did you ever think?" Kate asked. She squeezed my hand. She ducked her eyes, glancing towards her midsection.

No, I'd never thought.

"I know you always said you didn't want kids," she seemed to say to her abdomen. "I know you always worried. But we're solid, right? Like friends, even more than a couple. Don't you think we could do this? We're older… wiser. _Our_ child? Crazy. Right?"

Kate was hopeful. She held her breath. She held my hand in a vice-like grip.

"Our child?" I asked.

Back then I thought I'd only have one child, ever... when I was a different person. With Bella.

I blinked back tears. Kate leaned across the table, misunderstanding.

"You'd be such a good dad. I'd be a mum."

"But… we -"

"We've fucked around forever, Edward. Over and over, back and forth across the Atlantic. We're not getting younger. I love you. You _know_ I love you."

"Do you?" I wondered out loud.

"How can you ask me that?"

 _Because it wasn't my child._

"I really want this. I want _us_ ," she explained. "And these past few months, well, it seemed like maybe you did too."

"You really think _I'm_ the father?" I asked.

Wide blue eyes played at shock. "Of course."

"Just tell me the truth."

Kate's smile was brave. She managed to look me square in the eye.

"I've never wanted anything more."

"I can't have children, Kate," I tried to explain. I'd had a vasectomy years ago, after Bella's pregnancy.

"Because you're scared, but I know you'll be good at this. I know you. I've known you for so many years."

"Why me, though? Of all fucking people."

"You're a good man and I've loved you forever."

She had loved me – for years. It had to mean something. After all, I'd loved Bella for -

Kate pulled her knees up to her chin and peered at me, nervously waiting to see what I'd say. A blink and a flash and I saw Bella curled in a ball on my bed, waiting for a response that never came. I saw myself breaking Bella's heart.

That's when I knew I had a choice. Kate was handing me the chance to make the right decision. I could move on. I could be a father. I'd never have another opportunity.

There _was_ an outside possibility the child was mine. Vasectomies weren't one hundred percent foolproof. More than that, Kate _wanted_ the child to be mine. She knew me, she accepted me, and she still wanted me.

Bella wanted someone else.

"Okay."

"What?" Kate asked in a whisper.

"Let's do this."

It felt right. Moving on.

"Yeah?"

I felt myself nodding my head. I gripped Kate's hand back.

"Yes."

"We'll be parents together?" she asked.

"Even better. Marry me."

xXxXx

 **August 4th, 2016**

"Marry me."

I hadn't been planning to speak the words at that moment, but it was more than a spontaneous outburst. Our summer had passed in a blissed out haze where our Saturdays rolled into Sundays, and our Sundays into Mondays. Where Bella would find me in the studio and listen as I played with sounds, experimenting as my heart bled through my fingertips, or I'd tug at her clothing while she wrote, pushing back her chair, my head between her thighs, her panties thrown across the room. We laughed together, met up for swim breaks, and sauna breaks, and shower breaks in our bathroom overlooking the bay.

Tonight I gazed down at my love and her eyes sparkled in the starlight streaming from the windows. They shined almost with their own light, twinkling from the downy white tumble of bedding below me. Her body was warm against mine, soft, her limbs loose. My heart felt as if it might burst. This wasn't the plan, but it was the truth.

"Marry me."

I made sure Bella could feel I wanted her again. I could never get enough of her. There was never anyone else in this world I needed to be inside so desperately.

"What's gotten into you, lately?" she asked. Her fingertip traced my lip and I bit and sucked as I pressed against her swollen entrance. She was still wet from earlier. I could have slipped inside so easily, but I wanted an answer first.

I released her fingertip and brushed my nose against hers. "You call thirty years 'lately'?" I asked as I peered into her night sky eyes.

Bella shimmied her body against me, eliciting a groan. "You know what I mean, mister."

She was right, of course. I'd been responding to her presence like she was a siren and I'd been lost at sea. She would leave the bathroom in nothing but her bathrobe and I'd want her. I saw her dressing and wanted to put a stop to it. A glass of Scotch and I would seek her out, plying her with promises of making it quick, or slow, or however she wanted it. I wanted to watch her as she came for me in the daylight, and I wanted to feel out the contours of her body in the darkness of night. But I couldn't answer Bella's question.

"I want you even more after all these years. Marry me?" I asked again.

Bella pulled away from me, propping herself up on her elbows in the bed. I tried to ignore the sway of her breasts. "Why?"

"Why do I want you more?" I parroted, stalling.

"Why do you want to marry me? Why now?"

"Why not?"

"We've talked about this," she protested.

I straddled her hips, sitting naked and vulnerable in front of her. My erection was pressed against my abdomen and I could feel my nervous heartbeat from my chest through my dick and down to my toes. "You've talked about this and I've agreed."

I placed a hand on either side of Bella, bringing our bodies closer, my erection rubbing against her belly, closer to where I'd like it.

"I will never love anyone the way I love you, Isabella Swan. I have never desired anyone the way I desire you. We've made a life together. We've made a family. We've made a home. After all these years, I wish you weren't afraid of marrying me."

"I'm not afraid."

"Then why not?" I probed with words, and to be honest, with appendages. I brought my lips to the peak of her pretty tit. Bella sighed. I brushed her most sensitive spot with a finger. Lightly teasing.

"You are my life, Isabella Swan. You are my heart. You are my everything. Be my wife."

"But -"

"If you say yes, I'll make you cum harder than you have in your entire life," I murmured against her breast. Then I sucked the tip of her nipple between my lips and bit while my finger brushed again. "Tonight. Then again tomorrow morning. For as long as I'm physically capable."

"Not fair," she sighed, but she pushed her chest forward against my lips. "Promise?" she asked with a giggle.

"Say yes," I pled. I bit and pressed and rubbed, desperate yet in charge of her body. I was so in love.

"Edward," she sighed. My name falling from her lips would be her undoing. Fingers slipped deep inside and curled, as my mouth moved to her neck, her ear. She writhed beneath me.

"Say yes. Be my wife. Make my head as happy as my body feels right now. Make me the happiest man on the planet." My fingers pressed and released in a relentless rhythm, and just as I felt her walls quivering, ready to contract around me, I withdrew.

"Yes," she gasped.

"Yes?" I could hardly believe it.

"Please?" she asked, and her eyes dipped hungrily to eye my cock. She slipped one leg from between mine and wrapped it around my thigh, then the other, so she was open for me.

"You'll marry me?" I asked. I could hardly believe it.

"Yes," she repeated. I slid her legs up and around my waist.

"Marry me?" I asked, lowering my face to hers, brushing noses again, my eyes burning with unshed tears.

"Yes," she murmured as I slid inside her. "Yes."

"Yes."

"Yes."

xXxXx

Afterwards I gazed down at Bella, pliant and warm, limbs loose as she dozed in my arms. She'd said yes. It was almost inconceivable. She'd always made her thoughts clear on the matter, explaining our love was bigger than an outdated legal arrangement. I'd agreed in theory, but as it happens, it's everything I've ever wanted. It's what I was always afraid I could never have. Call me old-fashioned, but my version of 'happily ever after' involved rings and a ceremony in front of all the people most important to me, and being able to say "my wife" instead of hoping people might parse together what the word 'Bella' stood for. She was my everything. After making our home, I'd found a way to give voice to the scariest hope hiding in my heart, and she'd said yes.

Yes.

My fingers fiddled with the edge of the sheet, my mind ticked, my skin pricked, and I slipped from underneath Bella, then down the stairs and across the yard. I kept the lights dim and let my fingers rest before my heart hit the keys. I found a pen and some paper and scribbled, then crossed out, then wrote something more. Eventually, warmth blossomed from my chest and my fingers moved easier across the keys, warm and bright, for my everything come true, for the home I learned to believe in, almost too late.

Time slipped and I heard the door click open. I turned my head to find Bella, sleepy and rumpled in a lace camisole, lightweight sleep pants hanging from her hips. Suddenly I was aware I wasn't wearing a stitch and I felt my face color. She came to sit by my side, resting her head against my shoulder, a hand on my thigh.

"Play it again?" she asked, but it was an imperfect version of a perfect song, too close to my heart just yet to play out loud. Instead, I played some of the other melodies I'd pieced together over the sweet summertime months and she sighed and snuggled up next to me, and it was like when she was nineteen, but it was better. It threatened perfection.

After I played every new note ready for her ears to hear, I gently closed the fall and stood.

"Wait here?"

"What?" Bella asked.

I'd stowed it in the studio in a drawer with carefully wound cables and connectors. The black velvet square felt warm in my hands. I took a breath and bit my lip. When I turned back to Bella, she saw the box and her eyes went wide, the pink of her cheeks warmed to deep red, bleeding over her chest. A smile took up her whole face. "Edward!"

I took her hands in one of mine and pulled her a little to the edge of the bench so I could get down on one knee before her. Bella's breath hitched in her throat, like a hiccup or a soft sob. This wasn't quite like I'd planned it either, but it felt appropriate I was naked before her, baring not just my heart, baring literally everything for my everything.

"I wasn't kidding before, Bella, but it wasn't fair how I asked. You know I'll make sure everything I promised comes true, even if your answer's no. I'll fucking enjoy the hell out of it."

Bella shook her head as she laughed, tears pricking her eyes.

"My whole life was in preparation for you, for the two of us together, but I'm a slow learner. This life we have is better than I could ever have hoped for, and it would mean the world to me if you would officially have me as your husband."

I opened the box, proof this wasn't a whim, proof it wasn't for a fuck.

And Bella glanced up from the box, a tear escaping the corner of her eye, slipping down her face. The diamonds' sparkle dimmed next to the light in her eyes.

"I've already said yes."

I shrugged. "To bribery in bed."

"Bribery again?" she asked, peeking around the box, below my waist.

"Should I find some clothes and ask again? Third time's a charm?"

Bella shook her head and wiped her eyes. "Yes, you idiot. Yes. A million times yes."

xXxXx

 **August 20th, 2016**

Waiting any more than two weeks seemed ridiculous when we'd already waited our entire lives to make it official. Bella and I wanted Thea and Lizzy present, so I held out for sixteen days and a Saturday, perhaps the only thing traditional about our union. Bella gave in and let me fly her dad, Charlie, in from Western Washington, but made me swear I wouldn't ask him to walk her down the aisle. Just to be on the safe side, she nixed the idea of an aisle altogether. Instead, a clutch of chairs was gathered near the back of the yard in front of the trellis where the wisteria grew. Rosalie and Alice arrived at the crack of dawn to fawn over Bella, and shooed me away to the carriage house, where I paced until the caterers showed up and I could focus my nerves as I directed their activities in my kitchen.

I didn't realize I was elbow deep in a bowl of marinating vegetables until Emmett's booming laughter shook the stack of dinner plates on the counter next to me.

"What the hell are you doing? Are you the hired help or the man of the hour?"

I tried to laugh it off as I rinsed my arms in the sink and rolled down my shirtsleeves. I wouldn't be the first man on the planet to lose his cool just before saying "I do."

"Ever think you'd see the day?" Emmett asked as we wandered out back. Thea and Lizzy were busy arranging little bouquets of magnolias on each of the tables, while Jazz was helping a handful of musicians set up on the far side of the patio.

"No," I answered honestly. "Never. You think maybe you and Rose?"

Emmett chuckled under his breath and shook his head. "Nah, doubt it. Rosie's divorce isn't even finalized yet. Her kids wouldn't be fixing any flowers for us either. We're fine as is." He shrugged. "Heard you're writing?"

"Yeah, something. Finally. You want to see what I've got going on in there?" I asked, nodding toward the studio.

"If it'll keep your hands out of the cooking. Sure."

When Jasper wandered into the studio a few minutes later he found Emmett sprawled out on the couch, and me with a guitar in my hands, picking out a melody I'd been playing with for weeks.

"You know, when I told you to get your ass into a studio, this wasn't what… Wait, what now?" he asked, stopping in his tracks.

"What _what_?" I shot back.

"Since when do you play guitar?"

I shrugged. "It's not like I've got a band in my back pocket. When I can't sleep, when Bella's up in her office writing... I figured it out."

Jasper narrowed his eyes as he picked his way to the drum kit. "Alright. Sure. Alice told me back when you were some kind of musical prodigy, but the woman was always biased when it came to you. Thought I knew better." Jazz made little adjustments here and there to the kit, scooted up the seat, gave a few kicks to the bass.

"You did. I was just crazy enough to try."

"Lemme hear what you got?" he asked.

For the first time this century I laid down a melody and Jasper heard the beat, and it fucking rocked. There was a reason we were the first two official members of the Masens. We understood one another in a way words didn't fit. We pushed one another and together we brought something to life that wasn't there before, and we kept at it, and my nerves had something to do, and my mind had a place to focus and -

"Edward! Hey! Edward!"

I jumped, startled to hear Thea's voice booming over the studio intercom. Glancing up, I saw her at the window, all long limbed and willowy in her pale blue sundress, but with a stern look on her pretty little face.

"We've been looking for you. Don't you want to marry Mom?"

xXxXx

In the bright summer sunshine, hands held, in front of those we held nearest and dearest, I told Bella 'I do', and with an unwavering voice she said it right back. She smiled so big, somehow relieved, and my cheeks were wet, and they hurt because of the force of my own smile. I pulled her to me, and our friends clapped as my lips closed over hers, as she wound her arms around me and held me tight.

"My everything," I murmured. "I finally made you mine."

"About time," she whispered and kissed me back.

Since this was non-traditional and we could do whatever the hell we wanted, and since there was no aisle and nowhere to go, the band started soft and low, an instrumental version of one of her old favorite songs. Bella cocked her head, trying to pick out the melody as our bodies began to move.

" _Sometimes I feel like I can't even sing_ ," I whisper-sung as I pulled her close and swung. " _I'm very scared for this world. I'm very scared for me_."

Bella's smile grew, her eyes sparkled, and she whisper-sang back as we swayed in front of our closest friends.

" _The stars are the greatest thing you've ever seen and they're there for you, for you alone you are the everything_."

I spun Bella in a circle, and pulled her back to me, holding her close, and our friends stood up to join us; Emmett and Rosalie, Alice and Jasper.

" _Everything is beautiful. She is so beautiful. I look at her and I see the beauty of the light of music…_ "

Thea took her grandad's hand and pulled him onto the dance floor. I watched as Jared offered his arm to Lizzy. There was only one member of our family I couldn't find. I swayed in a circle as I danced with Bella and finally spotted Seth seated alone at a table back by the house.

When Charlie asked to cut in with Bella, I left her with a kiss and made my way back to Seth. I needed more than perfunctory tolerance on my wedding day, if not for me, then for my wife and step-daughter. He could try pretending for the sake of his family. As I came closer, though, Seth was wiping at his eyes behind his aviators.

"Bella's dancing with her dad?" he asked with an uneven voice. "Next you're bringing in the flying pigs, right?" He laughed and sniffed and ran a hand through his hair as he looked away from me.

"Thanks for putting him up at your place," I offered, taking a seat so we could watch everyone together.

"I'm a fucking saint," he agreed.

"Listen, with Lizzy here, and with me staying in the loft last night, and well -"

Seth waved his hand dismissively. "Don't think you have to lie for her now that you're married. Putting up Charlie Swan isn't my idea of a good time, but whatever. I'd do anything for her, you know that, right?"

"I do," I agreed.

"Good. If you two need anything you can always come to me. Okay?"

"Thanks."

We settled in and watched Emmett step in, swinging Bella away from her dad, and Rosalie kindly dancing with Charlie.

"I never thought I'd see this day," Seth said, sinking back in his chair, relaxing. A server came by and he took the offered champagne flute.

I laughed a little. "Seems it's a running theme."

"I didn't think she'd ever give herself the go-ahead to be truly happy, you know?"

And no, it hadn't been what I'd been thinking at all. I looked across the yard at Bella, now dancing with Thea, her head thrown back in laughter.

"I know she's told you stories about when we were kids, but you didn't live there with us. You don't know what we went through just to make it out. That man over there," Seth said, motioning to Charlie Swan. "Charlie doesn't know a thing about Bella's life. Doesn't even think to ask. Never did, as long as I've known him. All these years I've been around, and he doesn't know who I am. I mean, yeah, he knows I'm Thea's dad, but do you think he remembers me from Long Island? I lived with them for a fucking year while he was passed out drunk."

Seth sighed and took a decidedly undignified swig of champagne. "And he's the _good_ parent."

"I'm glad she has you," I admitted.

Seth turned to me and took off his sunglasses, and leaned forward, his elbows resting on his thighs. "She's always loved you," he said seriously. It was the most sincere Seth had ever been in my presence.

"I've always loved her." It was the truth I'd held in my heart all those years, never uttered to another soul.

Seth nodded. "I know. I knew from the beginning, better than either of you. And I never thought we'd get here, for a long time I never would have wanted to get here, but I'm glad we are. Thanks for hanging in there. For not giving up on it. Thanks for loving her enough that she's finally happy."

Hor d'oeuvres were circulated and champagne was poured. I stood and spotted Thea giving Bella a hug. At eleven, Thea was already as tall as her mom. She had big brown eyes like Bella's, and cinnamon skin like her dad, and was more headstrong than either of them. We were all in for trouble.

"Don't hate me?" I saw her say to her mom.

Bella laughed. "What?"

Instead of answering,Thea strode to the spot where the band was set up and grabbed the mic and tapped.

"Um?"

Thea caught my eye and I gave her an inconspicuous thumbs up as I made my way to Bella's side. _My wife_ 's side!

"What's going on?" Bella whispered in my ear.

Thea had been over the moon when we told her about the wedding, but I noticed the smile slip from her lips when Bella shook her head and said we'd keep it small and brief. So Thea and I made plans, and when Lizzy arrived we filled her in. I'd be damned if our daughters weren't an integral part of our wedding day.

"Um, hi!" Thea waved to the little crowd. "Everyone have their champagne?" Alice glanced over at me and narrowed her eyes. Rosalie raised her glass in the air and gave a little cheer.

"One of the first stories I remember my mom telling me when I was little was the story of how she met Edward and how they fell in love," Thea began. "Some kids had _Cinderella_ and _Beauty and the Beast_ for fairy tales, but I had mom and Edward."

A chorus of "Aw's," went up from the crowd. Bella gripped my hand.

"It's because of them I learned when I was really young what love is all about. I learned it holds you up through the dark times and doesn't die no matter how many years go by, or how many things get in your way. I learned true love means loving everything about a person, not changing them. Other kids might think about fairytales when they think about love, but I've always thought the best love story ever was my mom's. I hope I'm as lucky someday."

Thea paused to take a breath, then smiled bravely in my direction. Jared clapped hesitantly, uncertain if she was finished.

"Um, this next part is embarrassing. A couple years ago when I was really tired I messed up and I called Edward 'Dad-ward'. There, oh my god, I said it. So freakin' embarrassing!" Thea's cheeks went pink and she hid her face behind her hand and squeezed her eyes shut, almost like it could actually make her disappear, but she took a deep breath, lowered her hand, and soldiered on. "But the point is, today he's actually, officially, one hundred percent my Dad-ward. And I'm really happy about that."

Thea hastily placed the mic back in its holder, and then charged at me and Bella, throwing her arms around us and holding us tight. For the first time all day, tears fell down Bella's face as well.

"Ahem," I heard from the microphone, and the three of us glanced up to see Lizzy on the stage. Her strawberry-blonde hair was swept up from her neck and little tendrils framed her face. Her bright blue eyes sparkled, and little freckles and a hint of a sunburn kissed the bridge of her nose. The simple fact I'd helped raise this well-adjusted young adult, hell, the fact she's lived to young-adulthood, filled me with more pride than anything else I'd ever accomplished.

"The plan was for my step-sister… Whoa, my step-sister. Thea, it's official!"

Thea wooped and Lizzy clapped. Rosalie cheered again. Bella gazed up at me and cradled my face in her hand.

"Right, the plan was for my step-sister to start and for me to finish." Lizzy pressed her fingertips to the corners of her eyes and she smiled across the crowd at me, and my heart felt like it turned over in my chest.

"My dad's always been the best. I'm probably biased, but seriously, I've known for my whole life he always tries to do what's right. I also knew I was very lucky to have a dad who always tried. But then when I was ten I got really sick. My dad was there with me in the hospital every single day. But for a guy who was ready to do anything for me, there wasn't a lot he could do to make me better.

"The reason I'm bringing this up is because that's when I met Bella. My dad had been seeing her for a few years, and I guess they were worried about attachment or whatever, because I never met her until she found out I was sick. She didn't know me, but she came right away. In fact, she moved her whole family from San Francisco to London for half a year in order to be there to support him.

"When I met Bella I saw how much she loved dad, plain as day. She took care of him so he could do his best to take care of me. And we'd just met, but she loved me too. I knew it was because I belonged to dad, and I also knew it was just a tiny fraction of the love she had for him. And I was glad she was there, because if I died, Bella would have been there for him, loving him.

"Anyway, since I'm up here today it's pretty obvious I got better. I got to grow up and watch how much they love each other every summer when I come to visit. I'm not surprised at all they're getting married. The only weird part is I could see how much Bella loved you, Dad, back when I was little. Seriously, it was _so_ about time you popped the question. What the heck took you this long? She would have said yes when I was ten."

Everyone laughed, Bella included. I still wasn't convinced, but, maybe? I arched an eyebrow, but Bella wouldn't meet my gaze,

"Since we've all been waiting anywhere from five to twenty-five years to give this toast, let's all raise our glasses."

Thea ran back up to the mic, plucking a flute of sparkling cider from a table on her way.

"To Bella and Edward!," Lizzy cheered.

"To mom and Dad-ward!" Thea added.

"To step-mum and Daddy," Lizzy amended. "May you spend the next twenty five years together, continuing to show all the rest of us how it's done."

Everyone clapped, and tears were freely flowing down Bella's cheeks as our two girls both ran to meet us and we pulled them in for a hug.

Then I held Bella's face in my hands. "Thank you," I murmured. "Thank you.

"For what?" she asked.

"This is literally the happiest day of my life."

xXxXx

 **A/N: A long, long time ago when I first wrote There is a Light, I knew Bella and Edward would eventually get married. I'm so freaking glad I got to write it. Were you glad to read it? Drop me a line and let me know. xoxo ~BDC**


	5. It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City

**I'll just leave this gentle reminder that this There is a Light companion piece began as a submission for the Babies at the Border fundraiser, which raised over $13,000 for legal support and services for undocumented children separated from their parents at the border. I know fanfiction is an escape, but I also couldn't escape the way political winds would influence this unconventional family.**

 **Also, I don't own Twilight. Also, my beta, SereneInNC, and my pre-reader, Robsmyyummy Canabanboy, are the best.**

xXxXx

 **Chapter 5 - It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City**

 **August 25, 2016**

Bella and I fell asleep after our evening swim, while watching the sun set over turquoise water. I woke in twilight to suntanned limbs entangled, sticky with salt and humidity. Her hair was already sunbleached golden brown, blown across her face by the warm breeze. If I closed my eyes it was difficult to tell where I ended and she began. Five days ago she'd agreed we were one, and it felt as if our bodies were in agreement. Our chests rose and fell in tandem. Our limbs rested in complete comfort. Five days later I was somewhere suspended between an absolute high and calm contentment.

Bella shifted in her sleep just enough that I could feel at least one piece of my anatomy with certainty. I brushed my lips along her neck and she murmured. I kissed lower and she sighed. I pushed white lycra out of the way and licked seasalt from a soft nipple, ripe in the tropical heat. Bella's eyelids fluttered.

"Is this okay?"

She brushed the hair from her face so she could peer down at me through sweeping lashes, then pressed her breast against my lips. "This is what honeymoons are for."

Together in the moonlight, ties were loosened, bodies fit, breaths were lost to the sea air.

"I'm sorry," I whispered, holding myself over her.

Bella sighed and gripped my lower back, trying to pull me closer.

"I'm sorry."

Her eyes sought mine and I tried to smooth the crease newly stretched across her forehead.

"Wha-?" she whispered, the rest of the word lost in a pant and a muffled moan.

"I'm so sorry we never tried to make a baby together."

Bella's eyes went wide. Her limbs froze.

"Shhh… this isn't another bedroom bribe."

Bella exhaled. "That's good. And we're not in a bedroom."

We weren't. We were on a platform bed, open on three sides to the elements and the sea. Mosquito netting was buffeted by the breeze.

"I know that train's left the station, but someone mine and yours would have been amazing."

My nose brushed hers. Bella's eyes shimmered, tears gathered at the rim, like pools of moonlight. Her fingers pressed into the ridges of my spine. "I know," she agreed. "I know."

"I shouldn't have been scared. I'm sorry, baby." My kiss was gentle, conciliatory. Not enough, but also everything.

She cradled my face in her hand. "What we have is perfect."

"Thea and Lizzy are perfect," I agreed.

"I wouldn't change anything."

"There's a lot I regret and some actions I'd change," I admitted. "I'd love to fuck you with abandon and intention." I moved my hips. Her fingers gripped tighter as she arched her back and angled.

"You still can, just without procreation."

"I plan to."

xXxXx

 **Present Day - June 7th, 2018**

I snap out of it when I hear Jim tapping his foot impatiently against laminate flooring. I blink and take a breath and glance around. Right. I'm in a green room and nearly ten thousand people are in an arena down the hall. Sometimes my mind more than wanders, it sprints from the present, especially when there are things I'd rather forget.

I glance across the coffee table and Jim, the eager reporter, smiles expectantly. Shit. Try as I might, I can't remember where we'd left off. I take a swig from my water bottle, and notice Jim's empty-handed. I quickly stand and stride across the room, angling for the mini fridge.

"Would you like a drink?" I ask, burying my head inside, the cold air a relief.

"Sure. What do you have?"

"Water?" I remove a chilled bottle. Some things never change. I'm still trying to protect Jasper from himself. Alcohol is banned in my rider.

Jim grins. "Yeah, sure. Thanks."

I take a seat and hand over a bottle. We both take a sip and I'm glad for the manufactured break.

"So, uh, the line-up's pretty different on this new album," Jim comments, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Different from?"

Jim's face colors. "The Masens?"

"It's been thirty-some-odd years. This isn't The Masens."

"More diversity?" Jim adds.

"High time."

"More people involved, all around."

"People I love and admire. Patti was the first person I reached out to. I saw her for the first time when I was a kid. Jesus, she changed my life. Jasper knew he wanted to bring Jose in for a track or two. Having two guys behind a kit was something he's been dreaming about since back when we met, and Jose's a monster. I knew The Masens would be used as a benchmark, but this new album is something altogether different."

"Well, you and Jasper Whitlock are the same."

I glance at the water bottle in my hand and chuckle despite myself. It would be easy to say that Jasper hasn't changed. It would be as simple to say the same about myself. It wouldn't be true, though. Our friendship is something we fought to get back on track despite all the times our lives have fallen apart. Despite the times we managed to tear one another apart.

I don't often reflect on my friendship with Jasper. There's so much guilt intertwined with our deep love for one another that prolonged contemplation can lead to physical pain. Were it just Jasper's self destruction coupled with my own, I could better live with myself and my memories, but my best friend and protector was pulled into it all. Jasper changed Alice's life forever. _We_ changed Alice's life forever.

In the beginning, though, the time Jasper and I spent together was exhilarating. In some ways, meeting Jasper was like meeting the other half of myself I didn't know existed. We rounded one another out. Our friendship was the easiest thing in the world; carefree, dangerous, destined. The Masens wouldn't have existed if it weren't for Jasper. I'm certain of it.

xXxXx

 **March 10, 1975**

At first the buzzer was an oncoming eighteen wheeler and I jumped out of the way, rolling into a ditch on the side of the road. Then the buzzer was the same truck hitting my father further down the stretch of highway. I was flooded with relief, finally a free man. The third time I heard the buzzer, I had a dim idea there might be another reality beside the desert landscape where I found myself naked and newly fatherless. The fourth time the buzzer rang, I pried open my eyes. I was on the couch in the loft. Rain pattered against the window panes and water slowly dripped from a leaky pipe hanging from the ceiling. Our calico, Debbie, regarded me cooly from the rocker on the other side of the living space. Her latest dead offering lay on the floor in front of my face.

The buzzer rang again and I stumbled to the street-side windows, rubbing sleep from my eyes, ignoring the way the room slowly spun around me and my heart pounded in my chest. I had to use the whole weight of my body to pry open a window. "Yeah?" I yelled down.

"Hey there, sleepyhead," came a familiar drawl. "It's kinda wet. Care to buzz me up?"

I'd met Jasper Whitlock weeks ago at Sounds Records on 8th. He sat behind the counter wearing headphones, tapping out a complicated rhythm on the countertop. He raised an eyebrow when I slid a Brahms import in front of his face, but rang me up without a word. A week later, another Monday, another day where the restaurant was closed and the rest of the world went back to work, Jasper's fingers tapped out a syncopated cadence that broke down on itself and built back up again. I could hardly concentrate as I flipped through the stacks. He narrowed his eyes when I plopped _The Heart of Saturday Night_ in front of his face.

"What're _you_ listening to?" I challenged. I didn't like his silent judgement, and as frontman of the Dead Boys and resident at the Masens, I was certain I was superior to any unknown, lowly record store clerk.

He slipped off his headphones and held them out, all smooth and smirking like I couldn't handle whatever I was about to hear. The coiled cord strained to keep connected to the turntable.

And, shit, I didn't know what I'd been expecting, but the kid in front of me with the straggly blonde hair, bad tattoos, and worn out Dr. Pepper tee was more than met the eye. He continued to tap out the irregular rhythm on the countertop in perfect time with the music, even though I was the one wearing the headphones. He nodded his head and narrowed his eyes.

"Sun Ra," he drawled when I handed back the headphones.

"Huh," was all I could think to say.

"You're more inta lounge music?" He laughed under his breath as he slid my record into a brown paper bag and handed it off to me.

I found an extra album packed in with Tom Waits when I got back to the loft. At first I threw it across the room, disgusted. The pompous record store clerk could go fuck himself. Curiosity got the best of me, though, and I was still listening to _Discipline 27-II_ when Alice came home from her internship later that evening. She paused in the living area long enough to raise her eyebrows in question.

I shook my head. "Don't ask."

"Whatever, weirdo," she said, on her way to her room.

I'd thought I was some kind of musical genius because I'd studied classical as a kid and could play piano proficiently when I was four. Beyond my pedigree and the New York punk scene, maybe, possibly, I didn't know shit. I started hanging around Sounds on Mondays, and Jasper and I would take turns picking records to play on the turntable behind the counter, smoking cigarettes, taking swigs of whiskey he kept stashed in his duffle, eating buttered rolls from the corner store.

He was unimpressed with much of the stuff I played for him. He called it easy-listening anger, recorded hot and steady. The more he drank, the more his voice would get singsong and Southern, the more freely his musical opinions would fall from his lips. So I'd come with whatever liquor we had left over at the Masens and I'd fall into the rhythm of it and fall under his spell as he took me through an international tour of musical genres. It's not like Jasper was only into eclectic stuff, either. He had a solid appreciation for rock, whether from the South like he was, or from Asbury Park, just South of the city.

"Naw, that's not for listenin' to here," he said as I inspected the Lynyrd Skynyrd album he kept behind the register.

"Why not?"

Jasper cast his eyes around the store. A few old men flipped through the classical stacks, a jittery woman walked random laps around the aisles, probably waiting for her next fix to pass by on the sidewalk outside.

"How about I take the day next Monday and listen at your place?"

"My place?"

"You gotta be in the right frame of mind. Your place'd be better."

xXxXx

Jasper trooped up the three flights of stairs, wet and bedraggled, wearing dirty, ripped jeans, and a Rolling Stones tee. His hair hung in his face and his ever present duffle was slung over his shoulder as he stomped his work boots, shaking them of the late-winter muck from the sidewalks of the Lower East Side.

"What in the hell is this place?" he asked, glancing around at the expanse of it all. Old Masens' party flyers and concert posters were wheat pasted to the walls. Band stickers dotted the patchwork wooden floor and the exposed beams on the ceilings. The stage at the other end of the loft was more permanent those days, with a backdrop, a drum kit, mics and speakers. There was a little living room lounge-type set-up in a corner, a makeshift kitchen alongside the windows. Alice's room and the bathroom were at the back.

"Welcome to the Masens" I announced, throwing my arms wide with mock aplomb.

Jasper laughed. "Who's the Masens?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. This space. Me and Alice. Whatever you want it to be. Come in."

Jasper tossed his army jacket and duffle on a kitchen chair. "Alice your girl?"

"She'd probably smack you if she heard you calling her a girl." Alice was a woman with a capital "W". She had a subscription to _Ms_. and passed articles my way so we could talk them through on lazy Sunday mornings.

"Well, asking if she's your _woman_ sounds kinda strange."

"You've been warned, and she definitely isn't mine. You eat yet?"

Jasper shrugged as he wandered the place. He held out his hand to catch a water droplet from the cracked ceiling pipe. "You play?" he asked, checking out the kit on the little stage.

"Not drums."

Jasper looked me over, eyes narrowed, like maybe I had an instrument hidden behind my back. "What then?"

"Piano?"

"Ya' don't sound too sure."

I shrugged and stuck my head in our mini fridge. "You like eggs?"

"Where's your piano?"

"Don't have one."

"You're a weirdo."

I plunked a half carton on the counter with some milk, a hunk of cheddar, and a bag of frozen spinach. "That's what Alice says. Omelette?"

"Ha! I think I like this woman." Jasper peered over my shoulder at my breakfast in progress. "How 'bout 'shrooms?"

"What?" I asked. Jasper nodded toward the breakfast in progress. "Oh, no. None on hand. Sorry."

"Naw, I came prepared." Jasper rooted around in his duffle and pulled out a plastic bag. Breakfast took a turn I hadn't been expecting.

xXxXx

Three hours, or days, or weeks later Jasper felt certain we'd worked our way to Skynyrd by way of _The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust_ and _Pink Moon_ on my end, and _Greetings from Asbury Park_ and _Where We all Belong_ on his. All the pillows from the couch migrated down onto the floor, along with all my bedding and a few blankets stolen from Alice's room. Dirty plates from breakfast, Chinese take out, and pizza boxes were scattered at convenient intervals around the periphery of our listening nest. Jasper came with some Jack Daniels, and I gathered up the half empty liquor bottles left over from the Masens' last party and lined the makeshift bar up against the couch. We turned the volume up as high as it would go and the floor shook, the walls wobbled, the ceiling undulated over our heads in a brilliant cascade of color. My heart shuddered in time with it all, leaving me breathless. I folded my body into a quilt, wrapping it over and over until I was cocooned in soft warmth on my back, staring at the kaleidoscopic ceiling. If I turned my head I could watch the rain beat splattered watercolor patterns on the window panes.

Jasper and I lay on the floor and shared a pillow, our heads close enough to talk without shouting. He passed a joint. I passed a bottle from our bar.

"How'd you get here?" I asked.

"My feet?"

He laughed. I laughed. We rolled and came back together. I gathered as many pillows around me as I could find.

"You walked to New York?" I asked from beneath my pillow pile.

"I came with my girl, but we ran out of cash. She wanted back home more than she wanted me." Jasper pulled himself to sitting like he was climbing a rock ledge instead of a couch, then leaned against it, spent but victorious. He spotted Debbie's lifeless gift from earlier and flicked it out of the way. Debbie charged at the dead little thing and trotted it back to Alice's room for safekeeping.

"Sorry," I offered, but the sentiment came too late. I'd forgotten what I was sorry for. A dead rat?

"No sorry about it. It ran its course. Maria wasn't forever."

Right. I'd been sorry about his break-up.

"How about you?" he asked.

"What about me?"

"That's what I'm askin'." Jasper held his head in his hands as he bent double and laughed. He was wiry and long, and apparently bendy. He could've used a shower. And as soon as I noticed the dirt beneath his fingernails and at the nape of his neck I wanted underneath a showerhead, hot and steaming, but it would have meant I had to unroll myself and find a way off of the floor.

A few deep breaths and Jasper was steady enough to find his voice. "Where're you from, you weirdo?"

"Right here."

"Yeah? This loft?"

"Christ. New York City, born and bred. Walked here, even, from the Upper West."

"Shit. Aren't you all proper?"

I would have thrown a pillow at his head, but my arms were pinned to my sides inside my quilt cocoon. "Something like that."

Jasper stumbled as he got to his feet. According to my eyes, there were about eight of him overlapping one with the other, but he came together as a single person when he sank gratefully onto the seat behind the drums. He gave an exploratory kick to the bass, then another, as he looked around for drumsticks.

"Want me to turn this -"

"Nope," Jasper interrupted. "This tuned?" He tapped at a snare.

"Should be."

And as the next track on the album launched like a rocket into space, Jasper started banging out a rhythm. He wasn't playing what the drums on the album were, though. His beat matched, but it was another way to hear what was exploding from the speakers, something that tore at the bass line, but threaded it back together again. My mouth hung open as I pulled my arms from the quilt and climbed from the floor to the couch, then lay there plastered, watching the drummer on my stage as the ceiling whirled over my head, until it was too much. I closed my eyes and let it all roll over me, like I was a pebble tumbling along a riverbed in a torrent of rushing music-water. I felt like it was everything I'd ever need, never mind food, shelter, or even air.

Minutes passed, or hours, or days, and eventually the door to the loft slammed shut, shaking me from Jasper's spell. I jumped to sitting and spotted Alice surveilling the filthy kitchen, Jasper's overflowing duffle, and the floor littered with spilled Chinese food and her bedding.

Jasper slipped out from behind the drum kit and rushed to turn down the stereo.

"What in the hell, Edward?" Alice demanded.

"You must be the _woman_ who runs this joint." Jasper jogged across the place and held out a hand.

"Edward?" Alice asked. I pulled the quilt over my head. It felt much safer inside my couch cocoon.

"Alice, right?" I heard Jasper ask. "I've never seen anything like this place, and that's sayin' something."

"And who exactly are you?"

"Jasper Whitlock, ma'am."

"Don't ma'am me. I'm not your mom."

"Nope. My mama's not half as pretty."

"Edward?" Alice called, louder this time. I struggled from the quilt, falling off the couch in the process, knocking over a container of pork lo mein.

"We're gonna' clean this all up, Alice. You've got my word."

"Damn right you are."

"You look like you've had a day. Can I get you somethin'? We got some pizza, some whiskey. Or I could run out an' get you whatever you need."

Alice sighed. "The only thing I need is to dry off. And I could use some quiet. Keep the stereo down, okay?"

"Yes, ma'am. I mean, yes, Alice."

"Yes, Alice!" I called from the floor.

My roommate stomped across the studio and closed her door a little harder than necessary. Jasper plopped down next to me where I'd fallen, his eyes scrutinizing Alice's bedroom door almost like I'd been staring at him while he played.

"You and her never?" he asked.

"Nope. Not even close."

"Why?"

"She says she loves me too much." It was the first time I'd repeated Alice's words out loud to anyone. I'd held them inside, trying to hide all evidence of my inferiority, my inability to be loved. They'd been lodged there, heavy and larger than life. Now out in the light of day, the words seemed silly, almost insignificant. Laughter bubbled up from the empty pit in my stomach where those words and feelings had all been stuffed. Unburdened, I felt like I was floating. The ceiling opened up again and spiraled. Jasper joined in the laughter, his back falling to the floor. We both shook, gasping for air, knocking lo mein across the floor. And then we were quiet. And we breathed. In and out.

"Think that woman'll ever love me as much as she loves you?"

"Probably not. What we've got is true."

"Music to my ears, Ed. Music to my ears."

xXxXx

It took some time for me, Jasper, and Alice to fit all the obvious pieces into place. Jazz and I admired the heck out of one another, but we were young and ran in different circles. I was insecure, trying to hang onto my newly minted punk rock identity as lead singer of the Dead Boys. Jasper was a person apart from it all. So we hung in the daylight, on our days off. We drank too much, smoked too much, high on the freedom of doing whatever the hell we wanted, and having another person completely approve of it all.

Jazz loved anything that would bend his mind. I figured my brain was already broken, so I didn't hold back. Benzos, ludes, shrooms, acid all helped me escape from the parts of myself I wanted to forget. Part time work as a line cook left me with the flexibility to escape almost as often as I'd like.

Jasper drooled over Alice when she wasn't looking, and played it straight and smooth when she was. He never failed to refer to her as a woman, and still does to this day, although now it's more expected and less impressive. Alice had her life together in a way most twenty-one year olds seldom manage, which made her seem completely unattainable. She was a quasi-adult with an internship at _Rolling Stone_ by day, who ran one of the most successful underground parties and knew everyone worth knowing on the Lower East Side by night.

I caught Alice's lingering glances from time to time. Despite her no holes barred attitude, she appreciated my friend. He was my friend, though - the kind of annoyance that came with a younger brother, not necessarily a lover. And she'd grown up with a rotating cast of men in her life. Alice waited patiently for the real deal. It took a little while to see it was right in front of her, practically living in her apartment.

When the Dead Boys broke up and Jasper and I started fucking around together, combining our sounds, it was about the time Alice finally gave him the green light. Then our first party blew people's minds and Alice started managing our bookings at Max' Kansas City and CB's. We'd come home and celebrate like a weird dysfunctional family on hallucinogens, and woke up the next day and did it all over again. Those were some of the first best moments of my life.

Then decades later Jazz and I somehow found a way back to the studio together. Bella and I would invite Alice and Jasper over for dinner, and eventually Jazz and I would retreat back to the studio and lose ourselves in whatever madness we were making. Lots of times I'd glance up and spot a little figure curled up on the corner of the couch. Thea would bop her head to the beat as she read a novel or puzzled over homework. Eventually Bella would swoop in with a warning about the hour, but instead of pulling us apart, I'd pull her in to listen.

When I was a kid I thought I'd never have a relationship like Jasper and Alice's. Then, when I first allowed myself a relationship with Bella, I was sure it could never be forever. For a good portion of my adult life I was sure I'd never make music again. Those nights in my home studio I'd look around and realize I had so much more than I'd ever imagined I might. All along all I'd had to do was ask.

So I made a new habit of asking. I called people I'd wanted to play with forever. I asked songwriters, I asked guitarists, I asked poets, I even asked a brass band… and they came and I was living in a blissed out dream. I'd made a perfect home.

Those evenings, Alice and Jazz would eventually get Bella's hint and head back to the city. Thea would yawn and say goodnight and shut herself up in her room. Our bedroom door was hardly closed before my hands sought the right clasp, button, zipper, that could yield Bella's skin to my eager mouth, hands, dick.

"I fucking love you," I'd mumble as I tore at buttons on a shirt.

"Probably why you married me," she'd quip, her eyes shining, face flushed, game for my antics.

I'd have her up against a wall, a window, the tiles in the shower. Nights were never long enough, but they were exhilarating and exhausting. Bella slept soundly, her body pressed against mine.

She took to sleeping in late, and I'd be the one to get Thea fed and make sure her lunch was packed. Thea and I would chat about my music during our mornings together. She liked to listen and she had a good ear. Her advice was spot fucking on and I'd jot down notes to take with me to the studio later so I wouldn't forget.

Other days she'd be practically pulling her hair out, trying to finish the last of her homework. I'd sit with her, two bowls of cereal poured, and we'd worked through Singapore math, or Taiwanese trig, or whatever the fuck they were torturing kids with in school. Sometimes Thea would talk a blue streak about friends or ballet, and especially politics as the fall wore on. She'd go into detail about platforms and the latest polls, offering up spontaneous, impassioned treatises about gun violence and global warming, and the unfairness of sexism and racism in mainstream American society. She reminded me of Alice and Bella rolled into one: with Alice's youthful feminism combined with Bella's fiery determination. Then Thea would smile and leave me with a hug and a kiss on the cheek, morphing back into a little girl.

xXxXx

 **November 8th, 2016**

Thea had been planning an election night viewing party for the better part of a month. She'd invited our whole family, designed a red, white and blue dinner menu, hung streamers, and placed bowls of confetti around the room. Bella grumbled under her breath about how she'd be cleaning confetti out of corners for years, but she did it with a smile. Just weeks earlier she'd taken Thea to a Clinton rally in Oakland, over the moon her daughter would get to grow up with first an African American president, then a female president.

I was in the studio with Jasper and the rest of the guys earlier than usual that Tuesday. I felt like I was floating on a wave of intensity springing directly from my soul. Layering sound over bass, threading it with vocals that had been buried deep within me for over a decade was cathartic, to say the least. We'd really hit a stride, and I pushed it as long as possible. Times like that you didn't stop if you could help it. But then the drums cut out and the bass dropped and I turned toward Jazz and saw him waving his hands over his head, sweat dripping down his face.

"I'm callin' it, Ed," he huffed.

"Shit, Jazz, it was just getting good," I pled, still strumming my guitar.

"Aren't you forgetting something?"

"Am I?" I forced my mind to think beyond the music, to remember dates, times, loved ones. "Thea. Fuck!"

Mike and Jason, the guys who were with us most of the time on lead guitar and bass, cleared out quick, while Jazz helped me put the place back in order.

"Hey, Ed?" he asked.

"Yep?" I replied, flicking off monitors and wrapping up cording. "Yeah?" I asked again when Jazz didn't say anything. I turned around and he was leaning against wall and rubbing his temple, his face ashen.

"What is it? You okay? Alice alright?"

Jasper shook his head, looked me in the eyes and sighed. "I don't know how you did this with me. How many times even?"

"What?"

"There's no easy way to say it."

"Best way's through your mouth, asshole." I chuckled, but Jasper didn't see the humor in my joke.

"You're not gonna say it? You're gonna make me?" he asked, suddenly exasperated, sinking down onto the couch.

"Say what?"

"What your doin's not okay, Ed. Just like all those times you sat me down and told me what's what."

"I don't know what you're talking about. Interventions and shit? I'm not on drugs, Jasper."

"I know."

Jasper kept his eyes on me while my mind ticked through things I couldn't say. His gaze was steady and kind, enough so I knew he saw me, enough so I knew he cared.

"Shit, Jazz, Thea's going to be pissed if I miss this."

Jasper sighed. "I'll give you some leeway because I probably owe you my life, but I could say the same of Alice, and she's the one I go to bed with at night. I can't keep this from her forever, but I'd feel a lot better about it if you and I talked. I get it. Tonight's your kid's big night. Soon though. Understood?"

I shook my head. "Yeah. Sure."

xXxXx

After my talk with Jasper, I was a little dazed when I made my way across the yard and I walked through the back door, I'd been trying to brace myself for high spirits and flying confetti, so Jared took me by surprise when he rushed past me with tears in his eyes. Seconds later I heard the bathroom door slam shut and maybe the sound of retching. When I walked into the den, Seth was sitting next to Thea holding her hands and tenderly whispering into her ear. Rose and Bella were hugging and swaying on the couch. One of them was sobbing. Alice held a lit cigarette in one hand next to a cracked open window, a glass of something golden in the other.

"What're you doing?" I asked Alice in disbelief. Bella maintained a strict no-smoking policy. She had from the time she moved in with me in 1988.

"World's gone to shit anyway. Who the fuck cares?" Alice replied, downing her drink in one large gulp.

"What?" Jasper asked.

Alice slid a bottle of bourbon in Jasper's direction. "Take it, honey. You're gonna need it."

I grabbed the bottle and moved it back to the bar. "What the fuck, Alice?"

Thea pulled her hands from her father's and marched out of the room, her face red and tearstained.

"Thea?" Seth and I both called after her.

My stepdaughter took off for her bedroom in a sprint.

"... no path left to two seventy," a talking head was explaining on the television.

"What?" I asked the room.

Bella glanced up, her red-rimmed eyes meeting mine.

"You've got to be kidding," I murmured.

"Not even close," Alice replied, handing me my own glass.

Thea cried herself to sleep that night, Bella curled around her, comforting. Later, after the final tally, after putting Alice and Jasper in a cab, after Seth and Jared left to take to the streets of Castro, I cracked open Thea's door to hear her little snores and Bella's stifled sobs.

"Come to bed," I whispered.

Bella shook her head, tears streaming down her face.

"Please?"

"I need to stay with her tonight."

"Try to get some sleep, then," I suggested with a kiss to the forehead.

I woke early the next morning to find the bed next to me empty, but evidence of Bella's presence was there in crumpled sheets and haphazard pillow placement. Quiet sobs led me to the ensuite, where I found Bella on the floor next to the toilet, shaking with her knees pulled to her chin.

I took a seat on the floor across from her and clasped her ankles in my hands. "Take a few deep breaths," I offered.

"I can't," she choked.

"You can."

"You don't understand."

"Of course I do. Deep breaths, okay?"

Bella looked up at me, her big brown eyes were red-rimmed, ringed with dark circles. "You simply can't understand. I swear you can't. I lived a whole life and did the best I could, fighting an uphill battle the whole way. I thought it was going to be different for her."

"This doesn't change us, Bella. It doesn't change who we are."

"I don't want her to grow up in this world. What if she needs an abortion someday?"

"We'll take her wherever we have to. To Canada."

"What about all the other girls without money to get to Canada? What about healthcare? What about Seth and Jared? What about - "

I placed my hands firmly on her shoulders. "Isabella, stop. You need to breathe. Breathe with me." I took a few deep, abdominal breaths like I'd recently been learning in biofeedback, willing Bella to follow my lead.

"We'll get through this together. It's still me and you, and Thea, and Elizabeth."

Bella sniffled.

"And Seth," I added. "And Jared," because they were married, afterall. "And Alice and Jasper, and Rose and Emmett," I amended, because they were with us for life.

"I should have done more," Bella sniffed.

"This is not your fault."

"My publisher told me not to post political messages on facebook. I shouldn't have listened."

"This isn't your fault," I repeated, holding her in my arms as she curled into a ball against my side.

"This is everyone's fault, Edward."

I took Bella back to bed where she slept for a good portion of the day. This wasn't one of our luxurious, Saturday sleep-ins; the depression that enveloped her was profound. Lying there with her brought back memories from the horror of our past, when a much younger Bella stopped trying to rouse me from bed. She pulled the covers over her head, and sometimes she shuddered with silent sobs. She let me hold her, but didn't want to hear me tell her it was okay. She'd simply shake her head and pull the covers tighter. At some point in the afternoon, when the gray sky shifted and Bella began to snore, I stole away to shower and dress. I was about to make my way back to the bedroom to try to coax her with the promise of coffee, when I overheard Thea, just home from school.

"Tell me a story, mom?"

I peeked into the room and saw Thea drop like a sack of laundry onto the bed next to Bella. She plumped the pillows and got comfortable, tucking her knees to her chest. A tear escaped from the corner of Bella's eye and she tried to inconspicuously wipe it away.

"I can't, Little One," she whispered.

Bella could always tell Thea stories. It was her livelihood, her language. Bella would lull Thea to bed with her words long before Thea could understand what she was saying. When Bella and I were deciding whether to move forward with our relationship and move in together, she explained it all to Thea in the shape of a story that slowly unfolded over the course of several weeks.

"I thought the world would look different today," Thea said, snuggling closer to her mom. "But the BART's running. Coffee shops are open. Teachers taught math,english, whatever."

Bella buried her face in the bedding. "It's not how it works," she mumbled.

"I know. It's just strange. It doesn't seem real. There were little differences, maybe. I think I saw Ms. Smith crying. And then Mr. Donovan hugged her," Thea rambled. "There was an emergency meeting of the LGBTQIA Club. On the way home Tracey was saying they were both basically just as bad, which is outrageous, and I told her so. I kind of ended up yelling at her in the street."

"Yelling? Are you okay? Is Tracey?" Bella asked. Little One snuggled closer and Bella rolled onto her back, turning her face toward the faint glimmer of sunshine.

I quietly made my way into the bedroom and perched on the edge of the bed.

"Hey, Edward," Thea said.

"Hey, Little One. I'm going to take care of you guys, okay?"

Thea rolled her eyes. "You are?"

"Of course?"

"You're going to fix this for me and mom, and Seth and Jared? And people of color in general? You're going to protect like the whole country from the federal government?"

xXxXx

 **Present Day - June 7, 2018**

I shake my head at Jim. "Yeah, Jasper's on the album with me. I get what you're saying, but we're not the same. No one's the same these days."

"No, they can't be. I'm really sorry about Caius."

"Fucking heart disease. Thanks."

"No Marcus, though?"

I gritted my teeth and rolled my shoulders. "Different politics."

"Shit, really?"

"A fuckin' Republican. You can go to print with that."

Jim shakes his head, mourning Marcus almost more than he does Caius' untimely death. "That brings up another big difference between this album and your older stuff. First off, there's so much in there about the beauty of life - not really your old style. Plus there's a political side to this album we never heard from The Masens."

"The Masens couldn't get over themselves," I scoff, almost as if I weren't the lead vocalist. "I was an adult, I should have cared more. I was complacent, which was much easier for me as a straight, white guy. The beauty and the politics wrapped up in this album go together. They have to. We need to fight right now because life is beautiful; it's worth preserving. I was inspired by those around me I love, and by all they stand to lose in our current political environment."

I wish I could have protected my family like I'd tried to promise Bella and Thea back in November, 2016. To see Thea's hopes dashed, to see Bella so broken, and to see how personal it was for them broke something inside of me. Up until then, I'm ashamed to admit, I'd seen the world through my eyes alone. I saw their presence as part of the perfection of my own life. I took my principles for granted. I took our rights for granted. I was blithely unaware of how close we skirted to the edge of insanity, and then we just toppled over.

"Do you worry by taking a political stand you'll alienate a portion of your fanbase? It could impact album sales? Air time?"

"Do I look worried, Jim?" I eye the young reporter cooly from the comfort of the couch. I am beyond worried, in a state akin to barely-controlled panic, but it has nothing to do with politics or profit.

Jim smiles. "Not even close."

I've still got it. I take a break and check my phone for the hundredth time, but haven't received any texts since the one from Alice. I consider reaching out to Seth, but place my phone back on the table, instead. It can wait the two and a half minutes until this interview's over.

I smile across the table at Jim, trying to arrange my features and project the confidence he sees in me. "So, what else have you got for me?"

Jim bites his lower lip and takes a deep breath. "Well, I have a couple of questions I wasn't sure I was going to ask."

"Now or never. It's probably the last chance you're gonna get."

"Alright, then." Jim repositions himself in the chair. He clears his throat and checks his notes. He looks frightened. "About you and Isabella Swan…"

xXxXx

 **A/N: I'm wondering who out there besides Jasper guessed what was going on with Edward back in 2016. I'm talking fanfic characters and readers alike. Would love to hear your thoughts. xoxo ~M**


	6. Break It Up

**Chapter 6 - Break It Up**

 **Present Day - June 6th, 2018**

" _About you and Isabella Swan…"_

She sat shaking and wet on a broken-down pier on the south shore of Long Island. She had a pretty face and a pretty voice, but she was a child.

"The rain set the stage, allowing the defiance in your lyrics to shine through. And it helped you to include us like we were all in it together, not just watching, but participating. Ironically, without the rain, I think the whole thing would have been watered down."

"Where'd you get that?" I asked because I couldn't believe those words could have been conjured from the girl in front of me.

"What?" she replied, confused.

The words were hers; a beautiful and apt review. Reassured about my antics on stage, I smiled gratefully and the girl's cheeks went pink. She ducked her head and shivered.

"How old are you?"

"Sixteen. Almost seventeen."

She didn't think to lie, which in one sense was a relief. She was a soaking wet kid, stranded behind an amphitheater. I'd been that kid. Defiant. Alone. Too fucking smart for their own good.

xXxXx

" _About you and Isabella Swan…"_

Isabella perched on the other end of the backseat, sneaking glances in my direction as she held Emmett's jacket closed, covering up the way my damp cotton face was plastered across her chest. Her wet hair left an edge of sodden cloth over her shoulders and down her back. I knew what Emmett was thinking about this ride, and I tried to convince myself those intentions weren't lurking in darker portions of my consciousness.

Even so, I was still self-serving. The world was full of people who might need my help, but this girl managed to see through all the nonsense spouted in interviews and she saw me perform. She saw Edward Cullen, not Edward Masen.

"Tell me the truth. What did you think of the show tonight? I think I can trust you'll be honest."

She smiled bravely. "I thought it was amazing. You were great."

She wasn't a convincing liar.

" _That_ performance?" I pressed.

The girl closed her eyes and bit her lip, then shook her head. Her hands loosened their hold on the jacket and I spotted one of my larger than life eyes staring back at me. When she glanced at me again I shivered, somehow more exposed than I'd ever felt before.

"You seemed separate from the rest of The Masens. There was a space I think I heard in the music, but you guys are awesome and the rhythm section somehow held you all together, and you went all to pieces and then came back together over and over again. It all kind of went along with the rain, so I didn't think anything of it until now, but it was different from other shows I've seen videos of."

Staring right across from me was a kid who could state with poetic grace how The Masens were fraying at the seams, and how I'd left Jasper in charge of keeping us whole… when he could hardly hold onto his own sanity. I was a shit, made shittier because I'd picked up a kid to make myself feel better about it all.

"Our discord went along with your favorite part - the rain?" My voice was bitter. It was easier to tease than to think about the many ways I was an awful human being.

Isabella smiled, happy to be in on the joke. She leaned forward and my full face came into view from between the lapels of Emmett's jacket. "Don't take the rain personally," she whispered, sending chills down my spine. "Some things, like tsunamis, might just be bigger than The Masens."

"Bigger than The Masens? Blasphemy! You've lost your rights to that shirt. Take it off!"

The girl jumped in her seat, then shrunk back against the door.

I held up my hands. "That's not what I meant." My heart hammered in my chest.

"Um."

"Please keep your shirt on." I was an ass.

"Okay?" She tugged Emmett's jacket closed.

"This is where I should stop speaking." I looked out the window at the low pines rushing past as we sped down a desolate highway.

"You don't have to."

"But I should."

xXxXx

" _About you and Isabella Swan…"_

"Edward?" I was certain her voice was a delusion. I'd imagined I heard her shout my name dozens of times - on stage, in airports, outside recording studios and radio stations. Why not in an alley in New York City?

I nearly kept walking. I didn't want to compound the disappointment I'd felt when Emmett told me her house was empty. She was gone. Instead, I glanced over my shoulder and there she was, trying to push people twice her size out of the way. Her hair was shorter. Her skin was paler. Her cheeks were more angular. Her eyes were the same, though. My fucked up mind wouldn't have been able to recreate them. I hadn't seen those big, bottomless pools in over a year. It was her. I wouldn't lose her again.

"Edward?"

I'd told myself I was back in New York to see my mother, but right then, I knew the truth.

I was back in New York for her.

"Come on, Ed." Emmett wrapped an arm around my shoulder, trying to corral me to the waiting car.

"It's Trouble," I hissed in his ear.

"What, man?"

I nodded in Isabella's direction and watched as Emmett's eyes went wide with recognition.

"Bring her to the car."

"But, Edward -"

"Now," I hissed.

xXxXx

" _About you and Isabella Swan…"_

I wandered into the library to find Isabella lying on the couch with a book. She peeked out from behind the pages, but studiously went back to reading, her nose buried in the novel she held in her hands. I took a seat at the far end of the couch and reached for _The Man in the High Castle_ , pretending for all I was worth to be completely engrossed, locating the page where I'd left off. My leg shook. I pulled at my hair. I tried to achieve a manner of comfort, but it was impossible.

I'd spent years ignoring the sparking electricity between us. I'd made a part-time job of explaining away our association in terms of gratitude and mutual aid. I'd flown back from London just to be near her, something I silently berated myself for on a daily basis. And now I wanted more, but I couldn't figure out where the boundaries lay.

Bella's chest rose and fell evenly underneath her oversized black T-shirt, and her cutoff shorts showed a decent amount of thigh. She stretched her legs and pointed her toes, and they were only inches from my leg. Her toenails were painted black.

"Ahem."

I glanced at my couch partner and realized she'd spotted me ogling her toes. My reading partner. My roommate, for god's sake. My everything. She could get up and leave and I'd be nothing again. I'd lose myself to my mind.

"Yes?"

"Do you know this?" she asked, holding out her book.

 _The Left Hand of Darkness_ meant little to me. "Something for your class?" I asked.

Bella shook her head. "No, I thought maybe it's something we could both, maybe, I don't know. I can't stand Dick, but this…"

I nudged her feet with my thigh. "You're opposed to -"

" _Philip K_. Dick." Bella blushed, pulling her feet away towards her, but boldly holding my gaze. "That Dick in particular." She nodded toward the book in my hand. "Not my cup of tea. Have you ever read Le Guin?"

I hadn't, but a trip to the local bookstore remedied the situation. Each day when she returned from class we'd meet in the library. She'd curl her feet beneath her and I'd stretch out on the other side of the couch. We'd snack on summer fruit, drink iced tea, and talk our way through the chapters, debating gender's influence on culture and society, while pulling apart the poetry of the writing. I poured over the novel page by page, dissecting every nuance, contemplating every turn of phrase. And when it was over we moved on to other favorites, sharing, speaking, enthusing. Pulling books from one another's hands, elocuting to one another in the little library. Finding a way to exist with one another.

xXxXx

" _About you and Isabella Swan…"_

Bella was soft and warm, holding me close underneath a tumble of down. Her breath was hot and damp on my neck. We moved in tandem, rolling, clutching, then trading positions to roll to the other side. The sun moved lazily from east to west, skirting the horizon, glowing dully behind lowered blinds.

She didn't ask me to get out of bed. She didn't ask me what came next. She held on tight. She'd murmur in her sleep curled on her side of the bed, then stretch on waking, then reach for me.

Until one morning when her regular snore and stretch was followed by a shudder. Bella's body went stiff with tension.

"I think I'm pregnant," she whispered.

"What?" I mumbled, certain I hadn't heard right. I reached for her. I needed her warmth. We were all I had. The two of us stowed away on a bed in an empty apartment while the world went on without us.

Bella pulled herself from my grasp, then pulled her knees to her chin and rocked.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

She peeked from behind hands held over her face. "Pregnant?"

Had she forgotten? "You can't be."

Bella's shoulders fell. She faintly smiled. She cocked her head to the side, awash in relief.

"Why?"

"Birth control?" I sputtered.

"But -"

"You're on birth control," I repeated, willing her to accept it as truth.

Bella scooted to the edge of the bed, wrapping her arms tightly around her legs. She shook her head. "I don't know where to even get birth control."

"What the fuck?"

"It's been six weeks."

"But you said -"

"We've never talked about birth control."

"What the fuck were you thinking?" I yelled.

Bella curled tighter, a scared little ball on my bed. Her body shook.

She was pregnant.

xXxXx

" _About you and Isabella Swan…"_

Isabella curled underneath down, reluctant to wake up and face the day. She pulled my arm around her waist and held my hand, almost as if I were an anchor holding her securely in place. I'd wait until she drifted to sleep to slide from her resting grasp, and when I'd emerge from the shower I'd find her in the office, her computer switched off, curled on a loveseat, playing a game on her cellphone.

"Working?" I asked.

She shook her head without glancing in my direction.

"It's been weeks," I said, taking a seat next to her and pulling her feet onto my lap. Her toenails were painted black.

Her eyes met mine, her face lined with sadness. "I can't. It doesn't make sense to me anymore."

"I doubt it." No matter the trauma, Bella could always write.

"I'm serious, Edward. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know why I'm writing this idiotic thing." She waved her hand dismissively toward her desk. "It doesn't matter. None of it matters."

I clutched Bella's feet and pulled, until she was stretched out before me on the couch, then climbed over her. I pushed the hair from her face and kissed her until I felt her lips and limbs soften beneath me. "You're a storyteller. You string words together and give them meaning. People need meaning, now more than ever."

She shook her head. "A lot of good words do when the world's falling apart around you."

"It's always been falling, Bella. It's what you do while it falls that counts."

She shook her head. I recognized the frantic look in her eyes - from decades passed, my reflection in a mirror. So, I gave her what I'd always wanted back then, for too many years to count. I pulled her onto my lap and held her so she'd know she wasn't alone. She had the life I'd searched for decades to find.

"I'm too scared," she murmured, her face buried against my chest.

"I get it, Babe. And right now, the bravest thing you could do is face your fear. It's fucking hard. You know how fucking hard it was to ask you to marry me?"

Bella smiled up at me. "Your greatest fear was marrying me?"

I shrugged. "To ask. I was frightened out of my mind. Scared to ask you to move here as well."

"Scared of the burbs is more like it."

"Them too," I admitted. "But you should try taking life by the balls and look your fear in the eye. Figure out what exactly the thing is you're most scared of, and it can't go wrong. Look what it fucking got me? My dream come fucking true. And now the shit out back in the studio with Jasper? Own your fear and make it your bliss. I want the same for you, Baby. I've got your back."

"I'm not scared of my stupid story, I'll tell you that. It doesn't mean anything anymore."

"Throw it the fuck out. Start over."

"Alice is going to love this. You want to tell her, or should I?"

xXxXx

Jim clears his throat.

I startle and glance across the room at him. I'm certain he intends his smile to be reassuring, encouraging even, but the way he leans forward in his seat and holds his breath gives away his nerves.

"Yes?" I ask, like he hasn't been waiting for eons for some kind of response. I can't remember what he's asked me. I've lost track of time again. Hell, I lost track of the green room.

"Is it safe to assume Isabella Swan inspired large portions of this album?"

xXxXx

 **June 29th, 2017**

Dearest Isabella,

I've heard from our family and friends you spend much of your time writing these days. Alice tells me you're in one of your 'fever states' where she must remind you to eat and sleep. I wish we were together so I could be the one feeding you, then bringing you to bed with me. I understand I have no one but myself to blame for the loss, for these circumstances.

I'm sorry, Isabella. I'm sorry I kept such a monumental medical decision from you.

Please know the joy I felt in your presence over those months was real. All my words and actions through last summer, fall, and then winter, were completely authentic. Please understand I don't want to mask those feelings in order to share your home. I want to feel the world with you. I want to bask in its beauty and take shelter from its cruelty with you.

Do you remember the song I first whispered to you last summer? The song I'd hum last fall when I'd hold you and try to calm your nerves and ease your anger? I kept it from you, waiting on perfection, for the moment it felt ready to share. Now the song is fully formed, but you're gone.

I'll always seek out your opinion, for now, and for always. Enclosed you'll find the first track from my forthcoming album. I know you were wracked with questions when I sent you tracks as a teen. I couldn't have answered those questions back then, but I can safely do so now. Yes, Isabella. This song is inspired by you - by your spirit, your life, the way you make me want to be a better person. This song was first written after I asked you to marry me. After you said yes. Later, afterward, I watched you sleep by the light of the moon, and that night was more perfect than any other before it. I won't lose hope there might be a more perfect evening in our future.

In the words of my former nemesis, ours is a light that never goes out.

Yours forever,

Edward

xXxXx

 **Present Day - June 6th, 2018**

Jim clears his throat again. I glance into his expectant eyes.

"Yes, Isabella was the inspiration for several songs. She might be found in all of them if one knew where to look."

Jim glances nervously at the pad in front of him, then back at me. He's steeling himself to continue. "In _Groupie_ , Isabella wrote about your first attempt at a solo album. About the, um, aftermath."

" _Edward, I think I'm pregnant_."

"She did," I concur.

"And you mentioned a minute ago how the book ends with a happily ever after."

I narrow my eyes. I clear my throat. I reach for my water bottle. Jim hasn't asked a thing.

"Did, um, did this album put your happily ever after in jeopardy, or is the album an answer to the way things ended?"

Jim is out of line and he knows it. His forehead glistens and he can't look me in the eye. I could raise my voice and he'd probably run out the door without looking back. I know I have the power. I've used it before. But my mind's on a different path. And I'm ticking through the moments in time, piecing together the actions that lead to my world crumbling around me.

I wince but try to recover quickly, smoothing the lines on my forehead.

I think about the bottle of pills on the ledge in the bathroom. There are some things I'm unwilling to disclose. I won't encourage irresponsible copycat behavior. I won't advocate playing with fire. I don't need that kind of company.

"An album can't ruin a relationship, Jim. And don't get ahead of yourself. Isabella and I are still married."

xXxXx

 **December 28th, 2016**

Over the years our Christmases have often come later than other people's. Lizzy spends Christmas and Boxing Day with Kate. Rosalie travels to see her kids. Sometimes Emmett travels for work. But this year it was as much because Bella would rather ignore the holidays and lay curled in a ball on the couch in her office.

Thea and I did our best, and our best was fucking phenomenal if I was being honest. Our home was decked out with boughs of holly and strands of popcorn and cranberries. We'd stay up to the early morning hours making hand-cut snowflakes and Christmas cookies. Without Bella to keep us in line, our tree rivaled the one at Rockefeller Center in New York City. I knew this for a fact because I'd been to New York to play a couple of tracks for some execs sniffing out my latest project.

Finally, a couple of days after the official holiday the rest of the world celebrated, our preparations all came to fruition and my family was complete. Bella managed to smile. She took refuge in hugs from Alice and Rosalie. Thea cuddled on her lap. In all truth, she was too big for cuddling, but I know she'd do anything for her mom. She knew Bella needed it.

Lizzy hummed along to carols and snuck sips of the punch Alice made in the kitchen. I knew she could legally drink back in London, but she knew it made me edgy. I appreciated the sneaking. Seth laughed at us both, so I retreated to the dining room where Jasper eventually found me setting the table for dinner.

"How are you?" he asked, settling into a chair.

I glanced into the sitting room. Bella was curled on the couch, but she wasn't alone. Seth was giving her a foot massage, and Alice was re-filling her wine glass. Lizzy and Thea were building a fire, even though it was warm enough outside for shorts and a T-shirt. Jared, Rosalie, and Emmett were going through the record collection, looking for the next album to play.

"All things considered, today's as good as it gets."

"Shit, Ed," Jasper drawled. He pushed his chair from the table and shook his head at me.

"What?"

His blue eyes were glassy as he waited me out patiently. I'd done the same for him, time and time again over the years. It was a game neither of us would win.

"It's been tough seeing Bella depressed," I explained, even though I knew it wasn't the explanation he was after. "These past few weeks have been…" I shook my head trying to find the right words. "She's always been my anchor, you know? I'm kinda lost here. We both are. But we're muddling through."

"She seeing someone about it?"

"Yeah, finally. But taking care of her's taken time away from…" I waved my hand in the direction of the studio.

Jasper tented his hands in front of him. "You know, kind of put the brakes on, just when people were chomping at the bit."

"Yeah, well, we can get back to it once holiday stuff dies down. Once Lizzy and Thea are back in school. Once Bella's feeling a little better."

"You're blaming Thea, Lizzy, and Bella for your shit?"

"What?" I asked, louder than I'd intended. I saw Seth and Thea glance in our direction. So I took a deep breath to tried to calm my nerves and concentrate on table decorations. There was a turkey in the oven I should check on. Not to mention the gravy. And I had a few surprise gifts stowed away in the studio.

"Listen, Jazz -"

"You sure this break from recording didn't have anything to do with me?" he asked.

"No fucking way. Playing with you's been golden. Like back in the old Masens days when you and me ate, slept, fucked, made music, then did it all over again. Better than it's been in what, twenty, thirty years? Maybe after dinner, after gifts, let's head back and see what we've got? Right now I've got to get the -"

"Ed!" Jasper grabbed my hand, holding me in place. "I don't think you're being honest with yourself here. It was right after I talked to you when you made yourself scarce. It's a pattern I know well, and it's not a healthy one."

I felt my jaw clenching, my chest tightening. "My family's in the other room."

"I know. It's my fucking point, Ed."

I glanced over my shoulder. Thea had pulled Bella up from the couch and was trying to get her to dance with Jared. Lizzy spotting me looking in their direction and pushed her cup into Alice's hand.

"Don't you think they should know what's going on?" Jasper asked.

"Sometimes people manage day after day, year after year, even though they're not the picture of perfect mental health. My wife's carpet was pulled out from under her. I owe her this care - without any other unnecessary concerns. She doesn't need anything else on her plate right now."

"You owe her _this_?" Jasper asked, looking me over from head to toe. "Is that what you're telling yourself? You're making this decision for _her_ benefit? You think she'd agree, cause I know Alice wouldn't."

I pulled a chair out and took a seat next to Jasper. "Fine, you want to get real? When was the last time you fell off the wagon?"

Jasper shook his head. He ran a hand through his hair. I noticed his nails were bitten to the quick, ragged around the edges.

"Not so easy to talk about, is it?"

"Bowie," he said quietly, looking me in the eye. "The night we met him, it was the biggest fucking night of my life up to then. When he died…" Jasper shook his head again. "Two days and I was done. Just booze. No drugs."

"You try to hide it from Alice?"

"I can't. Maybe twenty years ago, but I can't lie to her. We've been through too much."

"And how do you handle hurting her?"

"It would hurt more if I didn't tell her. I don't want to be that kind of an asshole. Do you?"

Jasper was right. I knew I'd walled myself off to the thoughts he was trying to address. At first, it was a mistake. A slip of the mind. One day led to two. The world looked the same. I felt the same. Slowly, subtly, the world changed around me. Blank days filled with possibilities, with words, with melodies.

But where I first spent sleepless nights ruminating over the decision I'd somehow made, each day it became easier and easier to push those thoughts from my head. I didn't have to think about choices when my life was waiting to be lived. When there was so much for my brain to consider. When I had a family and a home and was working on a new album for the first time in forever. When I was thinking about getting a dog. Was there maybe a dog waiting in a kennel somewhere? Maybe a dog would make Bella happier. Give her a reason to get out of the house and get some exercise.

"Edward?" Jasper prompted. Quiet and patient.

I blinked and I was back in the dining room, a napkin ring hanging useless in my hand. Shit.

"It's been more than six months, Jazz." It felt like the words were being ripped from my chest.

"Why?" he asked, point-blank. It was a good question.

"I don't know if I can explain."

"This is a pretty big decision you can't put into words. Words are your thing. Always have been. But this isn't a fucking song, this is your life. So words or no, I'm telling you to make this right. Alice, Emmett, me, I guess it's old hat to us. It's just been a while."

"Do they know?" I asked, peeking into the sitting room. All looked well, but it wasn't like they'd be wearing letters across their chests spelling it out my mental status.

"Alice worries. It's her thing. But she hasn't asked, so I haven't told her. I don't know about Emmett these days. They've got their own issues with Royce's kids. But we get to get in our cars and drive the fuck away. Talk to the lady who you crawl into bed with every night, my man. She deserves to know where your head's at, at the very least."

"Fuck," I muttered. "You and Alice deserve the same. You're family. I wouldn't be here today without the two of you."

"Same, man. Kept each other on our toes, didn't we?"

"Kept each other out of our minds, more often than not."

"And Alice brought us back to earth." Jasper grinned as he gazed past me. His eyes practically sparkled. I wasn't surprised to hear the heels clicking on hardwood headed in our direction. Jazz leaned back in his chair, a lopsided grin on his face, his legs stretched out in front of him. Alice squeezed my shoulder on her way to his lap.

"What're you two whispering about?" she asked, slipping an arm around Jasper's shoulders.

"Just your knack for saving us from ourselves," he said with a kiss.

And I knew I was a shit. Before Lizzy, Bella, and Thea, Alice and Jasper were my family. We were The Masens. Jasper and I were out of our minds, but it was Alice who made us fabulous.

xXxXx

 **December 20th - 24th, 1975**

It all started with shrooms - as all things started for Jasper back then - and _It's a Wonderful Life_ , which was more of an exception. The reception on our tiny television was terrible. I tried wrapping aluminum foil around the rabbit ears, then got lost wrapping it around the television, and finally unrolled it like a silver carpet leading the way from the television to the couch. In the end, the only way we could see or hear anything was if I held the rabbit ears in my hands and twisted around, one foot braced against the brick wall.

Then Alice surprised me and Jasper both because she knew _It's a Wonderful Life,_ line for line. She stood up in front of the television, turned down the volume, and acted it out. Barefoot, in her orange turtle neck and tight leather pants, grinning like a fool, she was George, Clarence, Mr. Potter, and Mary. It was perfect and ridiculous, and I fell off the couch, laughing. Jasper remembered the stage lights and shined them on Alice.

Newly emboldened, Alice literally pulled us across the floor so I could act the part of Sam, Jasper would stand-in for George, and of course, Alice would be Mary. Alice fed us our lines, and Jasper and I each used one of my boots in place of an old-fashioned phone. Alice gave Jasper strict instructions to get as close to her as possible as she talked to me on my boot.

"You're jealous," she instructed Jasper. "But you hate me because I'm holding you back from your heart's desire."

"I can't do it," he whined, literally hanging on her.

"Yeah, you can," she said, trying to push him upright. "You have to. For me? For Christmas?"

"It's not true," he protested. And I saw the pained, puppy dog look on his face and it may as well have been written across his forehead that she was his heart's only desire. I saw the writing. Clear as day. In a deep shade of orangy-red matching Alice's lipstick. I also saw dozens of cats climbing the walls, but they were easier to ignore.

"It's why it's called acting. Because you're saying things that aren't true."

I'd fallen back on the couch again, watching the two of them instead of the television. Alice trying to hold Jasper up and give him acting pointers, Jasper with my boot pressed to his face, his shirt hanging open, his ripped jeans hanging on his hips. No track marks then. Not yet. Not for either of us. Just the fun that came with independence. Just the fun from feeling invulnerable.

"Edward! Get back here!" Alice commanded, pointing to the floor at her feet, and I crawled towards them with a boot in my mouth because standing was inconceivable. Jasper's hand was on her hip, his face in her hair, my boot fell to the floor.

Alice jumped. "Get the phone, Edward!"

I turned around and started crawling toward the kitchen, to the phone we'd just installed on our wall, and Jasper fell down laughing.

"George, how am I ever going to kiss you if you're in a heap on the floor?" Alice asked, pulling at her hair in frustration.

"Kiss?" Jasper asked, rolling onto his back, staring up at Alice, thoroughly entranced with the idea.

"Only if Sam gets out of the goddamned kitchen and manages to make you jealous." Alice looked my way, silently pleading.

"What?" I mouthed.

Before she could answer, Jasper was back up on his feet and lunged, knocking me to the ground. We wrestled until he managed to roll me like a log to the living room, to Alice's feet.

"You better fucking make me jealous, Ed. Right fucking now," he said, and he was so serious I couldn't catch my breath, I couldn't see straight. Standing was impossible. So I kneeled at Alice's feet.

"Alice," I rasped into the boot.

"Mary!" she corrected me.

"Who?"

"I'm Mary. You're Sam. It's a wonderful life."

"It really is. Isn't it, Alice?" I asked. "You ever fucking dream of this?"

Alice put her hands on her hips. Jasper looked like he might tackle me again.

"Right," I said looking between them. "Jealous. Got it." I cleared my throat. "Hey, Mary?" I asked the boot, gazing up at Alice. "Remember the time I kissed you?"

"What?" Jasper asked.

"In your bedroom. You were getting undressed and I came in and told you I lo-"

"Those aren't the lines, Ed," Alice warned, looked between me and Jasper.

"Remember the time I walked in on you in the shower?"

"Edward," she hissed, taking a step away from the two of us, so her back was against the gray static of the television screen. Shadows of _It's a Wonderful Life_ danced behind her.

"Remember the time you walked out of your room and I was fucking Siobhan, and you watched?"

"I didn't."

"And how all that's history since Jasper, I mean, George here, came along. You know how you dress up for him. Leather pants to watch TV at home at eleven on a weeknight? Really, Mary? You know how you ogle his ass when he gets up from the couch or a kitchen chair? You know how you play his music, Southern fucking rock when you're New York punk? You know how you wanted him to get shrooms tonight. To sit next to you tonight? To be George tonight?"

Alice and Jasper stared at each other. She looked frightened. He looked like he wanted to eat her.

"Did I make you jealous, George?" I asked, letting my boot phone fall to the ground.

George didn't answer. Neither did Jasper.

"You ever see her in the shower?" I asked. "Take it from me, you definitely should. Also, if you're jealous enough, you should kiss her. Let her know."

Jasper and Alice kind of collided in front of me. I sat back and let it all play out like an alternate, X-rated ending to _It's a Wonderful Life_ for a while, completely satisfied at a job well done. Until I realized it left me utterly alone. I willed myself onto my feet, found a hat, one glove, two boots (which turned out to be Jasper's and were too fucking small), three joints, an assortment of pills, a partridge in a fucking pear tree, and left Alice and Jasper to themselves.

Snow was piled on either side of the sidewalk. Streets were full of brown slush. It was cold, but neon signs danced on the buildings and I watched them to pass the time. Shots of whiskey kept me warm until money ran out, until I was kicked out of a bar, until my pants were soaked, and I lost the hat and glove.

Until I couldn't find my way back to The Masens and I wasn't sure if it ever existed, so I rode the train up to Columbus Circle, like I always did, looking for Alice, like I always did. I didn't have a key, so I rang up to the apartment.

"Hello?" My mom's voice was thin, nervous. Bing Crosby sang _Silent Night_ in the background.

"Ma!" I yelled.

"Hello?"

"Let me up!" I hollered. "I don't have a key and Jasper's fucking Alice and my pants are fucking frozen and I'm outa cash and I don't have my own shoes and I lost Jasper's pills and I should eat would you make me something and let me up?"

I banged on the door. Glass shook. Neighbors cracked their windows and peered down. I rang the buzzer again. And again. It was an A-flat. And again. It should have been an A.

"Ma! Mom! What the fuck?"

I pounded the door. I kicked it.

"What? You fucking got Dad up there? He keeping me out? He can go to fucking hell. You can go to fucking hell. Let me the fuck in the house!"

Finally, glass cracked with a little ping and zip, and the fissure inched its way from my feet to my face. And I reared up, head down, and charged. Glass shattered.

"Mom!"

I pulled shards of glass from the frame of the door. Blood trickled warm from my hands to my wrists, dripping on white snow at my feet.

"Mom!" Feet crunched over broken glass, over blood.

"Mom!"

xXxXx

"Maybe you _should_ be on meds," Alice said after I was released from psychiatric hold.

Jasper hovered, but couldn't look me in the eye.

"Fuck you," I mumbled, but the words fell flat. I couldn't muster any bite. Everything was dull, gray, uninteresting. I picked at the bandages on my hands but lacked the energy to do any real damage. I made fists and my palms burned. I felt something.

"I'm sorry," Alice said and went to hold my hand. I pulled it away. Slowly. Everything was slow. I walked slowly to the cab they'd splurged on. Inside, _White Christmas_ was playing on the radio. The words crawled across my brain as the cab crawled into traffic. Slowly.

"It's gray," I said, but my voice was garbled. My friends, too kind, ignored me instead of owning up to the fact I couldn't speak.

Jasper held Alice's hand. She leaned her head on his shoulder and tears slipped down her cheeks. My head fell against the window. It was cold, and my breath fogged it up. I rubbed my head on the damp glass in order to feel something. Cold. Wet. Hard. Slippery.

I closed my eyes and when I opened them, Jasper opened the door of the cab, and they both helped me up the stairs and I fell onto the couch.

"Meds?" Alice asked, pulling my feet onto her lap.

"Leave him be, Alice," Jasper said, and took her by the hand, back toward her bedroom. "Merry Christmas, Buddy. Glad we got you home."

xXxXx

 **February 15th, 2017**

I made a point of plugging in my cell as soon as I got to my car and started the ignition. I tapped out a rhythm on the steering wheel while I watched the low battery sign out of the corner of my eye. I tried to remember the last time I'd checked my phone, but couldn't come up with anything since I took some shots from backstage.

I'd had an amazing night. Hip hop wasn't strictly my thing, but after an electric show at the Bill Graham Auditorium, Mike and I'd spent hours talking everything from New York City in the '70s, to police brutality, to third party political candidates. We'd traded tracks over greasy food, and joked about fan encounters and fame, his new, mine fading. I'd laughed and life was good and the air smelled like green grass and saltwater as we left the diner. I'd stretched and turned, trying to remember how I'd gotten from the stadium to the restaurant, trying to remember where I'd left my car, and that's when I saw the horizon. I'd stopped to appreciate black hills against the bleeding sky, blue-black to purple to electric orange.

I'd nodded to Mike. "As long as we can lift our eyes heavenward, there's beauty to behold."

"You're a crazy motherfucker," he'd replied, shaking his head.

I turned back to bask in the first rays of daylight. It had been ages since I'd watched a sunrise.

A sunrise.

Shit.

My phone's screen flashed to life, bringing my mind back to the present. Text and voicemail notices scrolled one after the next, after the next as the phone weighed heavier and heavier in my hand. My heart pounded against my chest. I chose Jasper's voicemail first.

"I'm sorry, Ed," the message began, his voice tired and grave. "I gave you the election, then the holidays."

I didn't listen to the rest. I knew what he had to say.

Bella had sent three texts.

 ** _Hey, babe. When are you going to be home?_**

 ** _1:13 am_**

 ** _Let me know you're okay. Okay?_**

 ** _2:14 am_**

 ** _Call me_**

 ** _3:01 am_**

I couldn't bring myself to listen to her voicemails. I didn't try timing them with Jasper's call. I ignored Alice's message. For a fleeting second I considered finding a hotel room, then escaping to Lizzy in London. But I knew it wasn't Lizzy I was after. For a good portion of my life, I'd been running away from New York to London, then running back again. It's what I'd done over and over with Alice, Kate, Jasper and the rest of the Masens. It's what I'd done to Bella the one time it mattered the most. Yet here I was, despite it all, happily married. I owed it to Bella to head home.

I started up into the hills, toward my family and the best six months of my life. After I spoke with Bella they'd be in my rearview. I didn't know what would come afterward, but I drove toward it. I tried to tell myself heading home signaled personal growth and mental health. Losing track of time and staying out all night was stupid, but it should have been forgivable. It would have been for another man with another malady.

I turned onto our drive and the gate swung open. Warm lights guided the way down the hill and around to the garage. A pale mist hung over the lawn like tired clouds had fallen from the sky, softening my landing. The house looked dark, and I couldn't help but wonder if Thea was awake or if someone had started packing her lunch. I wondered if Bella slept fitfully; if she'd sobbed on Alice's shoulder.

I pulled alongside Alice's car. There was any number of reasons she might have been at my house, but there was really no question why she was there this morning. My hand shook as I turned off the ignition and I closed the car door gently. If they hadn't heard I was home it gave me one more unspoiled minute of this life I'd created.

Dewdrops dampened my shoes and the edges of my jeans as I walked slowly up the path to the front door. My heart hammered in my chest as I climbed the steps, then rested, my head against the door. I waited for my heart to quiet, for my mind to clear. Birds chirped, unaware of my plight. A plane flew overhead. Distant footsteps came quickly closer. I thought I might vomit and stepped back as the door swung inward.

I glanced up to see relief flooding Alice's features. "Thank god you're okay."

"I'm fine, I just -"

My well-being confirmed; Alice's black eyes flashed with anger. "What the fuck, Edward Cullen?"

I rubbed my eyes and tried to gather my thoughts. "This has nothing to do with -"

"Don't dare finish the fucking sentence, you asshole. This is what I have to deal with now? After everything I've lived through?"

" _I_ lived it, Alice. You watched."

"Really, Edward? Don't be a dick."

"Is Bella -"

"Maybe you should have thought about your wife before this morning. Before this minute."

"I've thought about nothing but Bella for months, Alice."

Alice shook her head. "I can't believe you fucked this up."

"Are you going to let me into my home?"

My friend narrowed her eyes and pressed her lips into a thin line, but stepped aside. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but the house looked the same as when I'd left. The living room was untouched and in order. The kitchen was dark.

"Is Bella awake?"

Before Alice could answer, Thea jogged down the stairs. She stopped short when she saw me in the foyer with Alice, the front door still ajar. "Are you just getting home?"

Instead of answering I closed the door and kicked off my shoes.

"And you stayed over?" Thea asked Alice.

"Something like that, Kiddo."

I kissed the top of my stepdaughter's head. "I told Mike what you thought of his support for you know who."

"Oh my god!" Thea cringed. "I don't even want to hear it."

"It might surprise you."

Thea clapped her hands over her ears. "La la la la la la."

"Hungry?" I asked, opening the freezer. Luckily there was a box of frozen waffles stashed in the back for mornings like these when I couldn't be trusted to measure flour, water, and milk.

"Sure."

"And that's that?" Alice asked, folding her arms across her chest.

"What's what?" Thea parrotted, looking between Alice and me.

"Could we talk about this later?" I asked.

"Oh, that's rich. When exactly would be the most convenient time for you? March, after you've purchased another mansion? April, when you blow up this album you've been working on? Or maybe May, from a sanitarium in the Alps?"

"What?" Thea asked again. "Alice?"

Alice shook her head. "Sorry, Kiddo. I should go. I had a long night."

"Um, okay?" she said, sliding onto a stool by the kitchen island.

Alice left for the den, probably to gather her things. The toaster dinged and I plunked two waffles onto a plate and ducked into the refrigerator for some butter and syrup where I tried to blink away unshed tears.

"Edward, what's going on?" Thea asked.

When I turned back to my stepdaughter, her eyes were wide with worry. Alice brushed past us, purse and jacket in her hands. "See you soon, Thea," she called.

"Edward?" Thea asked again.

"You should eat."

"What's up with Alice? Why was she here last night? How come you just got home?"

"Thea, please!"

The girl's eyes went wide as she froze in her seat, and for a moment she could have been Bella in the backseat of a limousine. Shit. My stomach turned. My mind reeled. I needed to find Bella. Thea needed to catch a bus. My heart felt like it was trying to beat its way out of my chest. I took a deep breath, hoping it might steady my mind and slow my heart. I closed my eyes and Bella was curled in a naked ball on an unmade bed as I threw dirty clothing into a backpack.

Then I glanced across the counter at Bella's daughter. "I lost track of time last night," I began.

"What's new?" she asked. "Happens all the time these days. You know, cell phones have clocks built right in."

"I know."

"You didn't call Mom, did you?" Thea asked between bites of waffle.

I shook my head.

"That's really lame."

"Definitely," I agreed. My chest ached. I wished it were so simple.

"Just call next time?" she suggested.

I silently nodded in agreement, not trusting my voice. Thea slid off her stool, came around to my side of the counter and wrapped her arms around me. "It's no big deal, Edward. I don't know what Alice's problem is. It's going to be okay."

xXxXx

Bella's eyelids fluttered when I sat on the edge of the bed. She yawned and stretched her arms, then blinked.

"Hey, there," I murmured. I kissed her forehead.

She smiled back at me, and just for a moment everything was fine. It was the way it was supposed to be. We'd go for breakfast and read the paper. We'd plant the magnolia we just bought by the back patio before Thea came home from school. We'd finish _The God of Small Things_ , one of her favorite books. We were reading together again. In the past, it helped me feel saner. These days it was doing the same for Bella, along with weekly counseling sessions and a bottle of pills of her own.

It was a silly, indulgent second, where the life I'd made for us continued on forever.

The second passed. Bella's eyes flickered and she shot up and pulled herself away from me.

"I got Thea fed and on the bus. She's got lunch money."

Bella shook her head.

"I'm sorry," I began.

Bella folded her arms across her chest. "For what exactly?"

"I lost track of time. My phone died."

"Really?" she asked, pushing the blankets aside.

"I should get a new phone or a new battery at least. This thing can't hold a charge to save its -"

"Really?!" she shouted.

Bella slid out from underneath the covers, then stood over me. "You lied to me. Over and over and over again. For months?"

"I never lied to you."

"And you're sitting there on our bed and you're still fucking lying."

"I never lied, Bella."

"You lied to me!" she shouted. Her dark eyes flashed, her face was flushed. With her hand raised I was half certain she might swing at me.

"We haven't talked about my medication in what? Years?"

"Omission is the same as a lie, Edward. This is what you found the ' _braver_ y' to do?" she challenged, making air quotes as she said "bravery".

"Living like this scares me to death," I tried to explain.

"No! Don't lie to me again. Stopping your meds didn't scare you to death. Do you know what you were really too scared to do? You were too scared to discuss any of this with me. Were you on your meds when you convinced me to buy a new home? To move away from Seth?"

"Yes. And for the millionth time, Seth lives just over ten miles from here, Bella."

Bella stomped from the room and I followed her to her office. The beginning of her most recent manuscript was projected on her computer's monitor. She'd taken my advice and was writing about her deepest fears. Eventually, she'd call it _Groupie_. She was afraid to let her readers know who she was. As a child, she was afraid she was no more than a groupie to me. I was afraid I was in love with her. We both had our demons.

"You had to know on some level," I explained. "Maybe you didn't want to admit it, because you're writing. I'm in the studio. You say something and it inspires me, and my music inspires you. We're creating together again, and it's even better than when we were back in New York because now we have our entire family cheering us on."

Bella glanced up at me in visible pain, as if what I'd said had the power to punch her in the gut. I wasn't certain what I said to make her feel so hurt, and I wished I could take the words back, whatever they were. I wanted to comfort. I tried to close the distance between us, but she stepped away, pulling her office chair between the two of us.

"Don't lie to me, Edward Cullen. Were you on your meds when you convinced me to marry you?"

I forced myself to face Bella head-on. I shook my head. "No."

"You bastard."

"You were happy. You said yes to everything. And look where it got us." I threw my hands out, indicating not just her office, but the orange glow of the sunrise over the bay outside her window.

Bella laughed bitterly as tears streamed down her face. "Yeah, look at us! I can hardly get out of bed each morning and you forgot how time works. You dick around all night with god knows who, and I'm wasting hours on a random writing prompt you gave me, and I was crying through the night and now I'm screaming through the morning, and -"

"Stop it!" I yelled. "Just shut the fuck up!"

The color drained from Bella's face. She looked frightened. I took a step. Than another. She backed up and my heart clenched in my chest.

"My body. My mind. My choice, Bella."

She narrowed her eyes. "Excuse me?"

"Ultimately, this was my decision."

"I thought you wanted to share this life. Isn't it why you wanted to marry me?"

"I spent the better part of my existence trying to share a life with you."

"And what happened to the promises you made?"

I saw us on our wedding day, the sun shining around Bella's head like a halo. The words had come so easy because my soul had been wedded to hers for almost a quarter of a century. "I kept every single vow I made to you."

Bella shook her head. She wiped at her eyes. "You told me you took your meds every day. Every night. You said you did it for Lizzy. What about Lizzy?"

"Lizzy's fine. She's at King's College. On the Dean's list."

Bella let herself fall onto the couch. Tears fell down her face as she gazed out the window. "So it was all for Lizzy? She's grown up and well-adjusted and Thea and I don't mean a thing to you? The hell with our well-being?"

"You know that's not true."

"Actions speak louder than words, Edward."

"I married you. That's one pretty decisive action."

"You want an award?"

"Sometimes I think I fucking deserve one. After everything I've done for you these past few months."

"What?" she asked, aghast.

"You heard me."

"What did you just say to me? Months? _Months_? Do you have any idea what it was like for me? Those months I had to live through when I was just nineteen? All the shit I didn't know how to navigate, and was just dropped into my lap?"

" _Once_. You did it once."

"Excuse me?"

"You lived through it once, and I spent years trying to make it up to you. To make myself the right kind of person to be with you. To deserve you. Look around you, Bella. My mental illness is hardly dragging you through the mud these days. These days I'm the one helping you."

"Helping me? I don't even know where I am anymore. I look around and I don't recognize this life. This house. This fucking book I'm writing. I don't recognize you. Up until this past summer, every day I woke up to you. Every day you made us coffee. Every night we'd talk before bed. I lost you, and now I know why."

"Did you fall in love with me for my reliability, Bella? Really?"

"I -"

"No. You didn't. You fell in love with me. And I'm still here. Loving you back. Loving our life. Living it for once."

"Well, I think I need you to live it somewhere else for a while."

xXxXx

 **Present Day - June 6th, 2018**

"Right, I, uh, didn't mean. I don't know. My editor just -"

"Spit it out, Jim," I say. I know the words sound unkind, but so was his question.

"The entire world's reading _Groupie_. Or that's how it seems," Jim explains. His excuse makes sense. Bella's autobiography has been on all the bestseller lists for months. I'm sure it's what filled this stadium and sold out all the other arenas across the country. A decade's old scandal playing out right under the public's nose. Entire websites are dedicated to ferreting out old photos where a teenaged Bella was caught in the frame.

"And it's ironic, I suppose, because now that the world knows you two were together for such a long time, well, now you're not. It's an interesting angle."

"Angle?" I ask, sitting back, looking Jim over. He squirms in his seat.

"Sorry," Jim says.

"You want an angle?"

"I, uh -"

"Unbeknownst to most Masens fans, Isabella Swan's words inspired Edward Cullen's lyrics for more years than he can easily count," I dictate, nodding to the pad and the idle pen on Jim's lap.

The pen slips through Jim's fingers as he scrambles to pull himself together, clattering as it hits the linoleum. I wait for him to retrieve it on his hands and knees. I wait for him to write what I just said, before continuing.

"Her words continue to inspire him to this day. The only difference is, now she's inspiring others as well. And now, hopefully, she'll get the credit he was too afraid to give her in 1989."

* * *

 **A/N: A very angsty Merry Christmas from me to you.**

 **Thanks to Patti Smith for writing Break It Up in 1975 in NYC.** **Thanks to SereneInNC for her beta skills during the holiday season. Thanks to Robsmyyummy Canbanaboy for pre-reading out of the blue. And special thanks to FictionFreak95 for pulling me out of my fan fiction slump, holding my hand, making me laugh, and giving me the courage to revisit this fic.**

 **FictionFreak95 and I have some stories in the works. You can find links to our joint account, Belladonna and the Fiction Freak on my author page, and in my favorites. Follow, favorite, I promise it will be fun!**


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